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UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 
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The  Channels  of  'English  Literature 


ENGLISH     PHILOSOPHERS 

AND 

SCHOOLS    OF    PHILOSOPHY 


4473     9 


'The  Channels  of  English  Literature 

Edited  by  Oliphant  Smeaton,  M.A. 

ENGLISH  EPIC  AND  HEROIC  POETRY. 
By  Professor  W.  Macneill  Dixon,  M.A., 
University  of  Glasgow. 

ENGLISH  LYRIC  POETRY. 
By  Ernest  Rhys. 

ENGLISH    ELEGIAC,     DIDACTIC,    AND 
RELIGIOUS    POETRY. 

By  the  Very  Rev.  H.  C.  Beeching,  D.D., 
D.Litt.,  Dean  of  Norwich,  and  the  Rev. 
Ronald  Bayne,  M.A. 

ENGLISH  DRAMATIC  POETRY. 

By  Professor  F.  E.  Schelling,  Litt.D., 
University  of  Pennsylvania. 

ENGLISH    SATIRIC    AND     HUMOROUS 
LITERATURE. 

By  Oliphant  Smeaton,  M.A.,  P\S.A. 

ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS  and  SCHOOLS 
OF  PHILOSOPHY. 

By  Professor  James  Seth,  M.A.,  University 
of  Edinburgh. 

THE  ENGLISH  ESSAY  AND  ESSAYISTS. 
By  Professor  Hugh  Walker,  LL.D.,  St 
David's  College,  Lampeter. 

THE  ENGLISH  NOVEL. 

By  Professor  George  Saintsbury,  LL.D,, 
University  of  Edinburgh. 

ENGLISH   HISTORIANS  AND   SCHOOLS 
OF  HISTORY. 

By  Professor  Richard  Lodge,  University 
of  Edinburgh. 

ENGLISH  CRITICISM. 

By  Professor  J.  W.  H.  Atkins,  University 
College  of  Wales. 

__^^ s 

J.  M.  DENT  6*  SONS,  LTD. 


ENGLISH    PHILOSOPHERS 

AND 

SCHOOLS  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


BY 


JAMES   SETH,  M.A. 

PROFESSOR   OF   MORAL   PHILOSOPHY  IN   THE 
UNIVERSITY  OF  EDINBURGH 


LONDON:    J.  M.  DENT   &  SONS,  LTD. 
BEDFORD  STREET,  STRAND.  19 12 

NEW    YORK:    E.    P.    BUTTON    (^    CO. 


All  rights  reserved 

Printed  by  Ballantyne,  Hanson  &•  Co. 
At  the  Ballantyne  Press,  Eldinburgh 


3 
IIW 


TO 

ALEXANDER    CAMPBELL    FRASER 

DISTINGUISHED    ALIKE    AS    A    REPRESENTATIVE    AND 

AS   AN    EXPOSITOR    OF    ENGLISH    PHILOSOPHY 

THIS   STUDY   IS   GRATEFULLY   INSCRIBED 

BY   AN   OLD   PUPIL 


PREFACE 


The   aim  of  this   volume    is   to  trace   the    chief   stages 
^  in  the  development  of  English  philosophy,  through  a  study 
^  of  its  leading  representatives  in  their  relation  to  one  another 
^  and  to  the  general  movement  of  English   philosophical 
^   thought.    Such  an  exhaustive  account  of  the  subject  as  w^ill 
'^  be  found,  so  far  as  the  seventeenth  century  is  concerned, 
^\  in  Charles  de  Remusat's  Histoire  de  la  Philosophie  en  Angle- 
<  terre  depuis  Bacon  jusqu'a  Locke,  or  in  Professor  Sorley's 
•  admirable  chapters  in   The  Cambridge  History  of  English 
^  Literature,  lies  entirely  beyond  the  scope  of  the  present 
4^  work.     The  same  may  be  said  of  such  a  treatment  as 
-A  Green's    in    his    well-knovv^n    Introduction    to    Hume's 
Treatise,  or  Professor  Forsyth's  in  his  recent  careful  and 
suggestive    study  of  the  *  method   and    general    develop- 
ment '  of  English  Philosophy.^     My  effort   has   been   to 
concentrate  attention  on   the  epoch-making  philosophers 
rather  than  on  the  less  important  figures  in  the  movement, 
and  on  the  actual  thought  of  the  individual  philosophers 
rather    than   on    the    logical  sequence  of  English  philo- 
sophy as  a  chapter  in  the  development  of  ideas.     More- 
over, in  accordance  with  the  plan  of  the  Series,  as  well  as 
in  accordance  with   the  facts  of  the  case,  English  philo- 
sophy has  been  regarded  as  a  form  of  English  literature. 
At    the   same   time   the  term  '  philosophy '  has  been  in- 

^  English  Philosophy :  a  Study  of  its  Method  and  General  Develop- 
ment, by  Thomas  M.  Forsyth  (1910). 


viii  PREFACE 

terpreted  in  a  strict  sense,  which  excludes  such  writers  as 
Carlyle  or  Matthew  Arnold  from  the  study  here  under- 
taken. 

I  have  to  make  grateful  acknowledgment  of  the  help 
which  has  been  ungrudgingly  rendered  by  my  friend  and 
colleague,  Mr.  Henry  Barker,  Lecturer  in  Moral  Philo- 
sophy in  this  University,  who  has  carefully  read  the 
entire  work  both  in  manuscript  and  in  proof,  and  whose 
advice  has  been  of  great  value  at  many  points.  I  have 
also  to  thank  Mr.  John  Handyside,  Lecturer  in  Philo- 
sophy in  the  University  of  Liverpool,  Mr.  John  Laird, 
Assistant  in  Moral  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  St. 
Andrews,  and  Mr.  John  Baillie,  Assistant  in  Logic 
and  Metaphysics  in  this  University,  for  their  kindness 
in  revising  the  proofs,  and  for  a  number  of  important 
suggestions. 

JAMES  SETH. 

February  ^  19 12. 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION      • 

English  Philosophy  as  Literature.     Its  Gene- 
ral   Characteristics  :     i.    Experiential  ; 

2.     EpISTOMOLOGICAL  ;       3.      PRACTICAL.         Its 

Beginnings  in  the  Thirteenth  and 
Fourteenth  Centuries  —  Roger  Bacon  j 
William  of  Ockham 


PART   I 
THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

CHAP. 

I.  Bacon  :    Philosophy    and    Scientific    Me- 
thod          20 

II.  Hobbes  :  Materialism  and  Political  Philo- 
sophy         56 

III.  The     Idealistic      Reaction  :     Cambridge 

Platonism  and  Rationalism  .         .         -79 

IV.  Locke  :  the  Problem  of  Knowledge  .       92 


CBAP. 


CONTENTS 

PART   II 
THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY 

PAGE 

I.  Berkeley  :  the  New  Idealism    .        .         .123 
II.  Hume  :  Empiricism  and  Scepticism     .         •149 

III.  The    Moralists  :     i .    The    Moral    Sense 

School  —  Shaftesbury,  Hutcheson,  and 
Butler  ;  2.  Association  and  Sympathy 
AS  Explanations  of  the  Moral  Sense — 
Hartley  and  Adam  Smith  ;  3.  The 
Early  Utilitarians— Tucker  and  Paley     188 

IV.  The  Revival  of  Rationalism  :    Price  and 

Reid         .......     227 

PART   III 

THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

I.  The  English  Development  of  Hume's 
Empiricism  :  i.  Utilitarianism  and 
Association  ISM — Bentham,  James  Mill, 
John  Stuart  Mill,  Bain  ;  2.  Evolu- 
tionism— Herbert  Spencer      .        .        .     240 


CONTENTS  xi 

CHAP.  PAGE 

II.  The  Development  and  Consequences  of 
THE  Scottish  Philosophy  of  Common 
Sense  :  i.  Natural  Realism  and  the 
Philosophy  of  the  Conditioned — Hamil- 
ton and  Mansel  ;  2.  Agnosticism  — 
Spencer  and  Huxley  ;  3.  Return  to 
THE  Characteristic  Point  of  View  of 
Scottish  Philosophy — Calderwood,  Mar- 
tineau,  Fraser 298 

III.  The  Idealistic  Answer  to  Hume  :  i. 
Spiritual  Philosophy  —  Coleridge  and 
Newman  ;  2.  Absolute  Idealism — Earlier 
Version  :  Ferrier  and  Grote  ;  3.  Ab- 
solute Idealism — Later  Version  :  Stir- 
ling, Cairo,  Green,  Bradley  .         •319 


CONCLUSION 
Present  Tendencies  in  English  Philosophy     358 

Index 368 


ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS  AND 
SCHOOLS  '^F  PHILOSOPHY 

INTRODUCTION 

English  philosophy  is  entitled  to  be  called  literature  in 
a  sense  in  which  the  philosophy  of  perhaps  no  other  nation 
has  the  same  right  to  the  name.  Whether  we  think 
of  Bacon  and  Hobbes  in  the  seventeenth  century,  of 
Berkeley  and  Hume  in  the  eighteenth,  or  of  Coleridge 
and  Ferrier  in  the  nineteenth,  we  cannot  but  recognise 
qualities  of  style  which  entitle  the  writer  to  rank  among 
the  masters  of  English  prose  of  the  expository  and  con- 
troversial type  with  the  best  essayists  of  our  country. 
Even  if  we  take  a  philosopher  of  lower  literary  merit, 
like  Locke  or  Reid,  we  find  that  in  comparison  with  the 
philosophers  of  the  Continent,  and  especially  of  Germany, 
the  style  is  characterised  by  the  absence  of  severity  and 
technicality  ;  and  while  this  may  lead  to  a  certain  loss  of 
precision  which  causes  difficulty  in  the  interpretation  of 
the  philosophy,  the  fact  that  the  works  are  written  in 
the  vernacular  adds  to  their  literary  value.  The  un- 
technical,  as  well  as  the  literary,  quality  of  the  style  of 
English  philosophy  is  doubtless  in  some  measure  due  to 
the  fact  that  its  chief  representatives  were  not,  like  the 
great  German  idealists,  university  professors,  but  men 
of  affairs,  in  close  contact  with  the  life  of  the  nation. 
This  is  true,  more  or  less,  of  Bacon,  Locke,  Berkeley, 
Hume,  and  the  Utilitarians ;    and  even  Hobbes  tells  us 

A 


2  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

that  his  chief  works  were  the  fruit  of  the  stirring 
events  of  his  time.  We  cannot  but  note  a  certain  de- 
terioration of  style  as  the  consequence  of  the  increasingly 
academic  character  of  our  national  philosophy.  In 
the  seventeenth  century  the  Cambridge  Platonists  are 
a  group  of  academic  thinkers,  whose  style  is  marred 
by  technicalities  and  spoiled  by  over-quotation  ;  while 
Hutcheson  and  Adam  Smith,  Reid,  Hamilton,  and  other 
leaders  of  the  Scottish  school,  as  well  as  the  repre- 
sentatives of  Absolute  Idealism  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
are  academic  teachers.  With  the  exception  of  Adam 
Smith,  Reid,  and  Ferrier,  these  later  writers  are  either 
without  literary  gifts,  or  tend  to  a  style  too  technical  and 
academic. 

A  distinguished  authority  on  the  subject  has  remarked  on 
the  unity  of  type  which  is  characteristic  of  English  philo- 
sophy from  first  to  last.  Speaking  of  the  five  dominating 
names — Bacon,  Hobbes,  Locke,  Berkeley,  and  Hume — 
Croom  Robertson  says  that  '  whatever  their  difference  of 
individual  character  and  aims,'  these  philosophers  *  display  a 
greater  general  similarity  of  intellectual  vision  than  can 
be  matched,  for  such  a  succession  of  first-rate  minds,  from 
the  history  of  any  other  modern  people.'  In  the  various 
systems  of  German  thought,  on  the  contrary,  in  spite  of 
their  apparent  uniformity,  'upon  a  closer  view  the  dis- 
tance is  seen  to  be  enormous  from  the  dogmatism  of 
Leibnitz  to  the  critical  spirit  of  Kant,  or  again  from 
Kant's  sober  reserve  to  the  stupendous  confidence  of 
Hegel ;  while  after  the  lapse  of  1 50  years  from  the 
time  of  Leibnitz,  a  general  change  of  face  may  be  said  to 
have  been  made  at  last.'  ^  While  this  contrast  is,  on  the 
whole,  a  real  one,  yet  it  must  not  be  over-estimated.  A 
closer  inspection  discovers  not  only  fundamental  differences 
between  the  philosophical  ideas  of  Bacon  and  those  of 
Hobbes,  but  between  Bacon  and  his  later  successors,  Locke, 
Berkeley,  and  Hume  ;  while  in  the  philosophy  of  each  of 

^  Philosophical  Remains,  p.  40. 


INTRODUCTION  3 

these  writers  there  is  a  diversity  of  philosophical  tendency, 
and  if  we  take  account  of  writers  who,  though  of  in- 
ferior merit,  are  yet  of  much  significance — the  Cambridge 
Platonists,  the  *  moral  sense'  school  of  moralists,  the 
Scottish  intuitionists,  and  the  advocates  of  absolute  idealism 
— we  discover  a  contrariety  of  doctrine  which  suggests  a 
vigour  and  independence  in  the  English  philosophical 
mind  which  is  hardly  less  remarkable  than  the  charac- 
teristic stream  of  tendency  which  is  generally  identified 
with  it. 

Yet  there  is  such  a  characteristic  stream  of  tendency. 
Three  main  features  can  hardly  fail  to  arrest  the  attention 
of  the  student  of  English  philosophy,  features  which 
differentiate  it  from  the  philosophy  of  the  Continent. 
These  are  (i)  its  experiential  and  inductive  method,  as 
distinguished  from  the  rationalistic  and  deductive  method 
of  Continental  philosophy;  (2)  the  epistemological  character 
of  the  former,  in  contrast  with  the  ontological  character 
of  the  latter  ;  and  (3)  the  practical  or  ethical  interest  which 
dominates  the  English,  as  contrasted  with  the  metaphysi- 
cal and  speculative  interest  which  dominates  the  Con- 
tinental philosophy. 

(i)  Bacon  shares  with  Descartes  the  honour  of  inau- 
gurating the  modern  period  of  philosophy.  Bacon's 
protest  against  the  principle  of  authority,  a  principle 
which  had  been  accepted  with  more  or  less  unhesitating 
loyalty  by  the  Scholastic  philosophers,  is  no  less  vigorous 
than  that  of  Descartes.  Both  alike  are  eager  to  substitute 
for  faith  and  tradition  the  independent  efi'ort  of  the  indi- 
vidual mind  in  the  pursuit  of  truth.  Bacon  extends  his 
protest  to  antiquity  itself  (for  is  not  antiquity  the  youth  of 
the  world  ?),  and  to  the  chief  philosopher  of  Greek  anti- 
quity who  was  also  *the  philosopher'  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  He  repudiates  the  method  of  the  Aristotelian 
logic  which  had  ruled  the  Scholastic  philosophy  in  its 
period  of  maturity — the  syllogistic  or  deductive  method 
— and  would  substitute  for  it  the  inductive  method  ot 
modern  science.  Descartes  insists  upon  *  clear  and 
distinct  ideas'  as  the  method  of  philosophical  thought; 


4  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

for  Bacon  the  only  fruitful  method  is  a  first-hand  study 
or  observation  of  the  facts  of  experience.  Descartes  is 
the  founder  of  the  great  speculative  movement  which 
proceeds  through  Spinoza  to  Leibnitz  and  Kant  and 
Hegel ;  Bacon  is  the  founder  of  the  English  experiential 
and  inductive  movement  represented  by  Locke,  Berkeley 
and  Hume,  Hartley,  the  Mills,  and  Spencer.  The 
characteristic  works  of  the  Cartesian  movement  are  the 
Ethica  more  geometrico  demonstrata  of  Spinoza  and  the  Logic 
of  Hegel ;  those  of  the  Baconian  are  the  Essay  of  Locke, 
which  follows  the  '  historical,  plain  method,'  and  the 
Treatise  of  Hume,  *an  attempt  to  introduce  the  experi- 
mental method  of  reasoning  into  moral  subjects.'  The 
ambition  of  the  former  movement  is  the  attainment  of 
systematic  completeness,  the  vision  of  all  things  in  their 
ultimate  and  perfect  unity,  or  in  God  ;  such  a  philosophy 
rightly  describes  the  subject-matter  of  its  investigation,, 
as  well  as  the  point  of  view  from  which  it  seeks  to  solve 
all  its  problems,  in  the  words,  De  Deo.  The  ideal  of  the 
latter  is  to  keep  close  to  reality,  to  verify  all  its  conclusions 
by  reference  to  the  facts  of  experience ;  it  is  always 
willing  to  sacrifice  system  and  symmetry  for  faithfulness 
to  the  data  of  experience,  speculative  completeness  for 
scientific  correctness  and  empirical  truth.  The  one  effort 
is  inspired  by  a  passion  for  system,  the  other  by  a  passion 
for  actuality  ;  the  temper  of  the  one  is  idealistic,  that  of 
the  other  realistic. 

Though  English  philosophy  begins,  in  Bacon,  with  an 
ambitious  attempt  to  construct,  at  least  in  outline,  the 
encyclopaedia  of  the  sciences,  the  basis  of  the  entire 
structure  being  *  natural  history,'  or  a  collection  of  all 
the  facts,  it  was  not  long  before  it  narrowed  its  scope  to 
the  more  specific  problems  of  philosophy,  and  the  experi- 
ential became  the  psychological  or  introspective  method, 
the  method  of  inner  observation,  which  fixes  attention 
upon  the  inner  side  of  experience,  or  upon  experience  as 
such.  This  is  the  method  common  to  Locke,  Berkeley, 
and  Hume,  to  the  associationists  and  the  Scottish  intui- 
tionists. 


INTRODUCTION  5 

The  experientialism  of  English  philosophy  must  not 
be  confused  with  empiricism.  Empiricism  is  developed 
out  of  the  experientialism  of  Locke  by  Hume  and  the 
associationists ;  but  Locke  himself  is  not,  any  more  than 
Bacon,  a  mere  empiricist.  Nor  are  we  to  understand  the 
contrast  between  the  experientialism  of  English  and  the 
rationalism  of  Continental  philosophy  in  any  absolute 
sense.  Not  to  speak  of  the  experiential  element  in 
Descartes,  Spinoza,  and  Leibnitz,  in  Kant  and  Hegel,  we 
find  a  constantly  recurring  note  of  rationalism  in  English 
philosophy — in  Hobbcs,  in  Locke,  in  the  Cambridge 
Platonists  and  kindred  thinkers  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
in  the  later  speculations  of  Berkeley  under  the  same 
Platonic  influence,  in  the  intuitionism  of  the  Scottish 
school,  and  in  the  absolute  idealism  of  the  later  nine- 
teenth century,  developed  under  the  influence  of  German 
philosophy. 

(2)  Although  Locke  is  the  founder  of  English  episte- 
mology,  it  may  be  said  that  from  the  beginning  of  the 
movement  the  question  of  the  nature  of  knowledge,  of 
the  true  method  of  scientific  explanation,  forced  itself 
upon  the  attention  of  English  philosophy.  Bacon's  attack 
upon  the  Scholastic  method,  and  his  proposal  to  substitute 
for  it  a  more  adequate  method,  amounted  in  reality  to  a 
criticism  of  knowledge,  as  it  had  been  previously  under- 
stood, and  a  new  theory  of  its  essential  nature  and  method 
of  procedure.  The  appeal  to  the  facts  of  experience 
which  he  inaugurated  was  at  the  same  time  a  condemna- 
tion of  the  accepted  method  of  deductive  or  dialectical 
explanation.  His  account  of  the  various  idola  or  precon- 
ceptions which  vitiate  the  knowledge  of  his  age  is,  in  the 
main,  a  statement  of  the  characteristic  defects  of  the 
Scholastic  method.  While  Descartes  also  begins  with  a 
repudiation  of  the  old  knowledge,  and  with  a  characterisa- 
tion of  the  new,  which  he  proposes  to  substitute  for  it,  he 
quickly  passes  from  the  problem  of  knowledge  to  that  of 
metaphysical  or  ontological  construction,  and  his  example 
is  followed  by  his  successors,  who,  with  the  notable 
exception  of  Kant,  accept  the  Cartesian  ideal  of  know- 


6  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

ledge,  and  are  preoccupied  with  metaphysical  construc- 
tion rather  than  with  the  problem  of  knowledge  or 
method.^ 

Locke  is  the  first  English  philosopher  to  substitute 
the  problem  of  knowledge  for  that  of  reality,  holding, 
like  Kant  in  his  proposed  *  criticism '  of  human  know- 
ledge, that  this  is  the  previous  question  which  must  be 
answered  before  the  metaphysical  question  of  the  nature 
of  reality  can  be  attempted  with  any  hope  of  success. 
In  his  own  memorable  words,  *It  is  ambition  enough 
to  be  employed  as  an  under-labourer  in  clearing  the 
ground  a  little,  and  removing  some  of  the  rubbish  that 
lies  in  the  way  to  knowledge.'  ^  His  main  difficulty 
is  to  show  how  knowledge  can  be  at  once  general  and 
real ;  and  his  conclusion  is  that  it  is  either  general  and 
unreal,  or  real  but  merely  particular.  Our  deficiency  of 
certain  knowledge  is  supplied,  he  holds,  by  that  '  opinion,' 

*  feith,'  or  '  assent '  which  is  based  upon  probability,  a 
conclusion  which  may  be  compared  with  that  of  the  later 
Kantian  criticism.     While  Locke  had   protested  against 

*  innate    ideas,'   Berkeley's    protest    was   directed    against 

*  abstract  ideas ' ;  and  his  nominalistic  interpretation  of 
the  significance  of  general  terms,  as  reducibile  to  the 
particular  ideas  which  they  represent,  is  closely  connected 
with  his  reduction  of  the  esse  of  the  material  world  to  its 
percipi.  His  theory  of  knowledge  yields  immediately 
a  corresponding  theory  of  reality.  All  that  was  left  for 
Hume  to  do,  to  reach  his  sceptical  dissolution  of  know- 
ledge, was  to  extend  the  Berkeleyan  nominalism  from 
matter  to  mind,  and  to  identify  the  connexions  between 
impressions  and  ideas  with  the  customary  association 
which  Berkeley  had  already  recognised  under  the  name 
of  '  suggestion.'     Thus  the  result  of  the  sustained  effort 

^  Hobbes,  like  Bacon,  lays  the  basis  of  his  system  in  a  theory  of 
knowledge ;  but  his  interest  is  rather  in  the  materialistic  system  which 
he  proceeds  to  construct  on  this  basis  than  in  the  security  of  the  basis 
itself.  The  Cambridge  Platonists  and  other  rationalistic  critics  of 
Hobbes  in  the  seventeenth  century  similarly  propose  a  theory  of  know- 
ledge which  carries  with  it  a  corresponding  theory  of  reality. 

•  Essay  concerning  Human  Understanding,  Epistle  to  the  Reader. 


INTRODUCTION  7 

of  English  philosophy  during  its  best  period  to  solve  the 
problem  of  knowledge  is  the  sceptical  dissolution  of  know- 
ledge into  opinion,  of  certainty  into  probability,  of  rational 
connexion  into  customary  association.  And  while  the 
refutation  of  this  scepticism  is  attempted  independently 
by  the  Scottish  intuitionists  and,  under  the  inspiration  of 
Kant  and  his  successors,  by  the  idealists  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  the  doctrine  of  associationism  is  developed  by 
Hartley  and  the  Mills,  and  Spencer  invokes  the  aid  of 
the  new  principles  of  evolution  and  heredity  to  reinforce 
the  same  view. 

It  may  be  said,  therefore,  without  qualification  that, 
since  Locke's  epoch-making  substitution  of  the  episte- 
mological  for  the  ontological  problem,  the  basis  of 
English  metaphysical  theory  has  always  been  sought  in  a 
theory  of  knowledge.  To  take  two  notable  examples 
from  opposite  schools  of  thought,  section  i.  of  Ferrier's 
Institutes  of  Metaphysic  is  devoted  to  '  the  epistemology, 
or  theory  of  knowing,'  section  ii.  to  *  the  agnoiology,  or 
theory  of  ignorance,'  section  iii.  to  '  the  ontology,  or 
theory  of  being ' ;  part  i.  of  Spencer's  First  Principles  to 

*  the  unknowable,'  part  ii.  to  '  the  knowable.'  Before 
proceeding  to  the  exposition  of  his  system,  the  former 
writer  thinks  it  necessary  to  prove  that  it  is  possible  to 
know  reality  and  to  distinguish  knowledge  from  ignor- 
ance ;  the  latter  to  prove  that  we  cannot  know  reality  or 
the  absolute,  but  only  the  relative  and  phenomenal. 
Gnosticism  and  agnosticism  alike  rest  upon  a  theory  of 
knowledge.      Although,    in    the    light    of   the    Kantian 

*  criticism,'  this  view  of  the  relation  of  the  ontological 
to  the  epistemological  problem  came  home  to  these  later 
thinkers  with  a  new  clearness  and  conviction,  it  was  a 
lesson  which  they  might  have  learned  from  the  indepen- 
dent movement  of  English  philosophy. 

(3)  It  is  important  to  observe  the  precise  sense  in 
which  English  philosophy  may  be  said  to  be  dominated 
by  the  practical  or  ethical  interest,  as  contrasted  with 
the  speculative  or  metaphysical  interest  which  is  the 
inspiration    of  Continental    philosophy.       It   cannot    be 


8  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

rightly  said  that  the  English  estimate  of  knowledge  is 
utilitarian,  although  Bacon's  insistence  upon  the  utility 
of  knowledge  in  his  famous  dicta  that  *  knowledge  is 
power,'  and  that  its  end  is  'the  improvement  of  man's 
estate,'  certainly  suggest  such  an  estimate.  It  is  rather 
that  the  intellectual  interest,  as  such,  is  subordinated  to 
the  moral,  the  theoretical  to  the  practical ;  that  the 
supreme  interest  is  the  conduct  of  life  rather  than  what 
Locke  calls  '  the  conduct  of  the  understanding.'  Perhaps 
the  actual  state  of  the  case  may  be  best  brought  out  by 
comparing  the  English  with  the  Greek  estimate  of  the 
comparative  values  of  theory  and  practice,  of  the  life  of 
thought  and  that  of  action.  The  Greeks  always  saw  in 
philosophy  the  true  *  way  of  life,"*  and  the  Socratic  identi- 
fication of  virtue  with  knowledge  was  only  the  explicit 
statement  of  the  conviction,  which  inspired  all  their  philo- 
sophical activity,  that  without  theoretic  understanding 
the  practice  of  virtue  must  be  blind  and  uncertain.  But 
the  Greek  admiration  of  *  theory  '  went  further  than  this 
interpretation  of  virtue  as  the  expression  of  knowledge. 
For  Plato  the  life  of  ideal  virtue  is  that  of  philosophic, 
as  contrasted  with  civic  excellence,  and  for  Aristotle  the 
entire  life  of  practical  activity  and  moral  excellence  is 
instrumental  to  the  higher  life  of  theoretic  activity  and 
intellectual  excellence.  The  English  mind  is  practical 
in  the  sense  that  for  it  the  supremely  important  thing 
is  action  ;  and  not  only  does  it  place  action  above  thought, 
but  it  is  apt  to  depreciate  the  practical  importance  of 
knowledge,  and  to  conclude  that  the  limitations  of  human 
knowledge  point  to  practice  rather  than  speculation  as 
the  real  destiny  of  man,  and  that  for  the  practical  conduct 
of  life,  faith  is  a  better  guide  than  rational  insight,  and 
probability  serves  where  certainty  is  not  to  be  reached. 
The  attitude  thus  described  is  not,  of  course,  peculiar  to 
English  philosophy.  It  is  the  characteristic  attitude  of 
Kant,  who  in  this  as  in  other  respects  may  be  said  to 
combine  the  qualities  of  English  with  those  of  Conti- 
nental philosophy.  As  he  refuses  to  leave  the  solid  ground 
of  experience,  and  repudiates  the  *  rational  dogmatism ' 


INTRODUCTION  9 

of  his  predecessors ;  as  he  substitutes  epistemology  or 
the  *  criticism '  of  knowledge  for  the  old  ontology  and 
metaphysics,  so  he  finds  the  ultimate  clue  to  the  nature 
of  reality  in  the  practical  rather  than  in  the  speculative 
reason,  in  the  ethical  rather  than  in  the  intellectual  inte- 
rest. Even  for  Spinoza,  with  all  his  intellectualism,  the 
moral  and  practical  interest  may  be  said  to  be  supreme, 
since  the  great  service  which  the  intellectual  vision  of 
all  things  in  the  light  of  their  divine  unity  and  necessity 
renders  to  man  is  to  free  him  from  *the  bondage  of  the 
passions ' ;  for  Spinoza,  as  for  Socrates,  virtue  is  know- 
ledge, and  the  supreme  value  of  knowledge,  in  his  eyes, 
is  that  it  makes  virtue  possible.  The  peculiarity  of  the 
English  view  is  that,  depreciating  the  moral  value  of 
knowledge,  at  least  of  the  speculative  type,  and  insisting 
upon  the  necessity  of  supplementing  the  defects  of  know- 
ledge by  a  faith  or  practical  certainty  which  satisfies  the 
needs  of  the  moral  life,  it  tends  to  diminish  the  ardour  of 
the  pursuit  of  truth,  and  is  even  apt  to  lead  to  the  appeal 
to  the  ordinary  practical  understanding  or  the  '  common 
sense '  of  mankind  for  the  solution  of  purely  speculative 
problems. 

It  is  not  surprising  that  the  English  contribution  to 
ethical  and  political  philosophy  should  be  considerable 
both  in  amount  and  in  importance.  The  course  of 
political  and  constitutional  history  stimulated  reflection 
upon  the  nature  and  functions  of  the  State  and  the 
theoretic  basis  of  that  liberty  of  the  subject  which  asserted 
itself  more  and  more  as  the  ideal  of  the  national  aspiration. 
The  treatises  of  Hobbes  and  Locke,  the  one  maintaining 
the  absolute  and  inalienable  character  of  the  authority 
of  the  sovereign,  the  other  insisting  that  government  is 
a  trust  for  the  faithful  discharge  of  which  the  holder  may 
rightfully  be  called  to  account  by  the  people  who  have 
committed  it  to  him,  are  of  epoch-making  importance 
for  political  theory.  The  importance  of  Hobbes's  Leviathan 
is  not  less  for  ethics  than  for  politics.  Proclaiming  as  it 
does  the  radical  individualism,  the  inherent  selfishness  of 
human  nature,  it  stimulated  a  succession  of  moralists  to 


lo  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

the  effort  to  establish  the  opposite  view  ;  the  early  in- 
tuitionists  and  the  advocates  of  a  *  moral  sense '  united  in 
a  common  protest  against  what  they  regarded  as  the 
travesty  of  human  nature  offered  by  Hobbes.  The  most 
notable  result  of  this  effort  is  found  in  Butler's  Sermons 
on  Human  Nature^  which  is,  all  in  all,  probably  the  most 
important  contribution  of  the  English  mind  to  the 
theory  of  ethics.  The  union  of  the  ethical  and  the 
political  interest  which  is  characteristic  of  Hobbes,  but 
which  falls  into  the  background  in  his  successors,  again 
becomes  prominent  in  the  utilitarians  of  the  nineteenth 
century. 

The  real  beginning  of  English  philosophy  is  to  be 
dated  from  Bacon's  break  with  Scholasticism.  The 
Scholastic  philosophy  was  not  national ;  it  represents  the 
common  intellectual  effort  of  Christian  Europe.  As 
Professor  Sorley  says,  'The  English  language  may  be 
said  to  have  become  for  the  first  time  the  vehicle  of 
philosophical  literature  by  the  publication  of  Bacon's 
Advancement  of  Learnings  in  1 605.  .  .  .  National  charac- 
teristics are  never  so  strongly  marked  in  science  and 
philosophy  as  in  other  branches  of  literature,  and  their 
influence  takes  longer  in  making  itself  felt.  The  English 
birth  or  residence  of  a  mediaeval  philosopher  is  of  little 
more  than  biographical  interest  :  it  would  be  vain  to 
trace  its  influence  on  the  ideas  or  style  of  his  work. 
With  the  Latin  language  went  community  of  audience, 
of  culture  and  of  topics.  This  traditional  commonwealth 
of  thought  was  weakened  by  the  forces  which  issued  in 
the  renascence  ;  and,  among  these  forces,  the  increased 
consciousness  of  nationality  led,  gradually,  to  greater 
differentiation  in  national  types  of  culture  and  to  the 
use  of  the  national  language  even  for  subjects  which 
appealed  chiefly,  or  only,  to  the  community  of  learned 
men.  However  much  he  may  have  preferred  the  Latin 
tongue  as  the  vehicle  of  his  philosophy.  Bacon's  own 
action  made  him  a  leader  of  this  movement  ;  and  it  so 
happened  that  the  type  of  thought  which  he  expounded 


INTRODUCTION  1 1 

had  affinities  with  the  practical  and  positive  achievements 
of  the  English  mind.'^ 

On  the  other  hand,  it  has  been  suggested  by  Croom 
Robertson  that  the  beginnings  of  English  philosophy  are 
to  be  sought  within  the  Scholastic  period.  '  No  nation 
has  kept  more  steadily  to  its  line  of  thought  .  .  .  but, 
also,  none  perhaps  has  thought  so  persistently.  We  seem 
to  have  had  a  line  before  any  other  modern  people.  .  .  . 
In  gauging,  historically,  the  philosophical  performance  of 
the  English  mind,  those  who  rate  it  low  and  those  who 
rate  it  high  err  alike,  as  it  seems  to  me,  in  contracting 
the  vision  too  much.  Always  it  is  presumed  that  the  first 
note  was  struck  by  the  famous  Chancellor  less  than  three 
centuries  ago  .  .  .  that  before  Bacon  there  was  no  philo- 
sophical thought  in  England,  or  none  at  least  that  could 
be  called  English.'  It  is  forgotten  '  how  actively  the 
English  or  British  intellect  was  at  work  in  an  age  long 
before  Bacon  and  towards  a  result  which  he  and  his 
followers  are  commonly  thought  to  have  been  the  first 
to  conceive.'  *  Men  of  our  race  played  a  part  of  quite 
singular  prominence  in  the  general  intellectual  movement 
of  Europe.  .  .  .  Almost  might  one  say  that  as  long  as  the 
movement,  from  taking  place  within  the  fold  of  the 
universal  Church,  was  in  the  strict  sense  a  collectively 
European  one,  the  start  at  every  new  stage  of  the  course 
was  due  to  the  initiative  of  a  British  schoolman.'  ^  In 
proof  of  his  contention,  Robertson  cites  the  names  of 
John  Scotus  Erigena  in  the  ninth  century,  John  of 
Salisbury  in  the  twelfth,  Alexander  of  Hales  and  Roger 
Bacon  in  the  thirteenth,  and  Duns  Scotus  and  William 
of  Ockham  in  the  fourteenth.  Of  these  names,  however, 
the  only  ones  which  can  be  said  really  to  represent  the 
characteristic  trend  of  later  English  philosophy  are  those 
of  Roger  Bacon  and  William  of  Ockham,  the  experien- 
tialism  of  the  former  and  the  nominalism  of  the  latter 
heralding  the  dawn  of  modern  philosophy,  and  anticipating, 

^  '  The  Beginnings  of  English  Philosophy,'   Cambridge  History  of 
English  Literature,  vol.  iv.,  ch.  xiv.  p.  268. 
'  Philosophical  Remains,  p.  28  ff. 


12  ENGLISH    PHILOSOPHERS 

along  one  of  its  main  lines,  the  tendency  of  later  English 
thought. 

*It  is  more  than  probable,'  says  the  late  Professor 
Adamson,  *that  in  all  fairness,  when  we  speak  of  the 
Baconian  reform  of  science,  we  should  refer  to  the  for- 
gotten monk  of  the  thirteenth  century  rather  than  to 
the  brilliant  and  famous  Chancellor  of  the  seventeenth.'  ^ 
*  He  had  the  same  thought,  the  same  ambition  ;  he  con- 
ceived the  same  enterprise  with  the  same  courage  and  less 
glory,'  says  Remusat.^  That  enterprise  was  the  reform  of 
philosophy  by  the  substitution  of  the  appeal  to  experience 
for  the  method  of  argumentation  from  premises  accepted 
on  authority.  Like  the  later  Bacon,  he  begins  his  plea 
for  reform  by  an  enumeration  of  the  chief  causes  of  error, 
or  offendicula.  Of  such  pest'tferae  causae  he  distinguishes 
four  kinds — authority,  custom,  the  opinion  of  the  unskilled 
many,  and  the  concealment  of  real  ignorance  with  the 
show  or  pretence  of  knowledge.  Of  these  the  first  and 
the  last  are  the  objects  of  his  special  denunciation,  and  he 
finds  them  combined  in  the  attitude  of  Scholastic  philosophy 
to  its  sources.  Apart  even  from  its  roots  in  authority, 
however,  he  condemns  the  Scholastic  method  of  argumen- 
tation as  a  medium  of  truth.  Experience  alone  certifies 
or  verifies  the  results  of  argument.  *  If  we  wish  to  have 
complete  and  thoroughly  verified  knowledge,  we  must 
proceed  by  the  methods  of  experimental  science.'  This 
last  is  '  the  mistress  of  all  the  sciences  and  the  end  of  all 
speculation '  {dom'tna  omnium  scientiarum  et  finis  totius 
speculationis).  But  while  he  thus  regards  experience  as 
the  indispensable  verification  of  truth  reached  by  deductive 
reasoning.  Bacon  insists  upon  the  value  of  the  latter 
method  in  its  own  place.  In  particular  he  emphasises  the 
importance  of  mathematics,  which  he  calls  *  the  alphabet 
of  philosophy.'  'Physicists  ought  to  know  that  their 
science  is  powerless  unless  they  call  in  the  aid  of  mathe- 
matics.'   In  this  recognition  of  the  necessity  of  combining 

*  Roger  Bacon:  the  Philosophy  of  Science  in  the  Middle  Ages,  p.  7. 

•  Histoire  de  la  Philosophie  en  Angleterre,  i.  43. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

deduction  with  induction,  and  especially  in  his  appreciation 
of  the  scientific  value  of  mathematics,  Roger  Bacon  shows 
a  deeper  insight  into  scientific  method  than  the  author  of 
the  Novum  Organum.  '  In  wealth  of  words,  in  brilliancy 
of  imagination,  Francis  Bacon  was  immeasurably  superior. 
But  Roger  Bacon  had  the  sounder  estimate  and  the  firmer 
grasp  of  that  combination  of  deductive  with  inductive 
method  which  marks  the  scientific  discoverer.'  ^ 

Like  Francis  Bacon,  this  remarkable  thinker  of  the 
thirteenth  century  rates  the  practical  value  of  knowledge 
above  its  theoretical  value.  *■  He  belongs  to  the  order  of 
thinkers,  typified  by  Pythagoras  rather  than  by  Aristotle, 
who  engage  in  speculation,  not  for  its  own  sake  alone, 
but  for  social  or  ethical  results  that  are  to  follow.'  2 
Moral  philosophy  is  for  him  the  science  to  which  all 
the  others  lead  up.  Yet  here  also  he  balances  with 
fine  perception  the  two  sides  of  the  case.  *  Theory 
is  useless  without  practice,  and  practice  blind  without 
theory.'  Throughout  the  Opus  Majus  we  cannot  but 
see  that,  in  spite  of  his  denunciations  of  Scholasticism, 
he  is  deeply  interested  in  the  theological  and  religious 
ideas  of  his  age  ;  and  although  the  demand  for  a  reform 
of  philosophical  method  and  the  profound  interest  in 
natural  science  which  this  work  displays  might  lead  us 
to  infer  that  its  author  had  no  interest  in  the  characteristic 
problems  of  Scholastic  philosophy,  the  account  which  a 
French  writer  has  given  of  the  contents  of  his  many  un- 
published manuscripts^  makes  it  clear  that  the  great 
controversy  regarding  the  nature  of  universals  fascinated 
him  hardly  less  than  his  contemporaries,  and  that,  as  Mr. 
Bridges  says,  '  we  shall  best  understand  Bacon's  life  and 
work  by  regarding  him  as  a  progressive  schoolman.'  *  It 
is  all  the  more  surprising  that  he  should  have  been  so  far 
ahead  of  his  time  in  his  appreciation  of  the  scientific  aspect 
of  knowledge,  and  should  have  not  merely  anticipated  but 

^  J.  H.  Bridges,  Introd.  to  Opus, Majus,  p.  xci. 
',  Bridges,  loc.  cit. 

'  Charles,  Roger  Bacon,  sa  vie  et  sa  philosofhie. 
*  Bridges,  Introd.  p.  xcii. 


14  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

excelled  Francis  Bacon  in  his  interpretation  of  scientific 
method. 

Of  William  of  Ockham  it  has  been  said  by  a  careful 
student  of  his  works  that  '  he  was  the  great  English 
schoolman,  and  his  nationality  appears  everywhere  in 
his  writings  and  actions,  distinguishing  him  from  the 
other  leaders  of  mediaeval  thought.  .  .  .  We  see  in 
William  of  Ockham  some  of  the  best  features  of  the 
English  character.'^  Haureau,  the  historian  of  Scholastic 
philosophy,  affirms  that  '  it  is  in  reality  upon  the  soil  so 
well  prepared  by  the  prince  of  nominalists  that  Francis 
Bacon  built  his  eternal  monument.'  ^  He  carries  further, 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  that  divergence  from  the 
essential  principles  of  Scholasticism  which  Roger  Bacon 
had  inaugurated  in  the  thirteenth.  He  so  widens  the 
breach  between  faith  and  knowledge  as  to  constitute  an 
irreconcilable  dualism  between  these  two  spheres ;  and 
by  his  criticism  of  realism  he  undermines  the  Scholastic 
method  of  abstract  reasoning,  and  prepares  the  way  for 
the  modern  scientific  method — the  inductive  investigation 
of  the  concrete  facts  of  experience. 

Going  further  than  any  preceding  Scholastic  philosopher 
in  separating  the  spheres  of  theological  and  philosophical 
truth,  Ockham  maintains  that  none  of  the  truths  of 
theology  can  be  proved  philosophically,  that  in  seeking 
to  prove  even  the  existence  of  God  we  are  involved  in  in- 
soluble contradiction.  It  is  difficult  to  determine  whether 
his  zeal  in  thus  separating  the  things  of  faith  from  the 
things  of  knowledge  was  the  result  of  his  concern  for 
religious  or  for  scientific  truth.  The  probability  is  that 
he  shared  the  tendency  to  religious  mysticism  which  was 
characteristic  of  the  Franciscan  Order,  of  which  he  was 
a  zealous  member,  and  that  his  tlepreciation  of  theology 
as  a  science  is  intended  as  an  indirect  defence  of  practical 
religion.  The  actual  result  of  his  teaching,  however,  was 
in   the  main   destructive,  lending  force  to  the  growing 

1  T.  M.  Lindsay,  British  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  Ivi.  p.  3, 
*  Histoire  de  la  Philosophic  Scolastique,  ii.  474. 


INTRODUCTION  15 

tendency  to  adopt  the  doctrine  of  a  *  twofold  truth  * 
which  was  fatal  to  the  presupposition  of  Scholastic  philo- 
sophy— the  essential  identity  of  the  content  of  faith  and 
that  of  knowledge.  Nor  can  it  be  doubted  that  a  part  at 
least  of  Ockham's  own  interest  in  the  distinction  was  the 
freedom  of  scientific  inquiry  which  it  promised  and  which 
constituted  its  positive  significance  for  his  successors  in 
English  philosophy.  The  later  Bacon  and  Hobbes  draw 
the  same  sharp  and  absolute  line  of  distinction  between 
the  spheres  of  faith  and  knowledge,  the  only  difference 
between  these  philosophers  and  William  of  Ockham 
being  that  the  religious  interest  in  the  distinction  which 
was  apparently  primary  for  him  is  in  them  entirely  sub- 
ordinated to  the  scientific  interest  in  intellectual  freedom. 
Probably  it  was  the  union  in  Ockham  of  these  two 
interests,  no  less  than  his  struggle  against  the  papal 
authority,  that  appealed  so  powerfully  to  Luther,  who 
spoke  of  William  as  *  mein  lieber  Meister  Ockham.' 

But  it  is  as  the  *renewer  of  nominalism'  that  Ockham 
is  best  known  in  the  history  of  philosophy.  The  doc- 
trine of  realism,  variously  modified,  had  finally  established 
itself  as  the  orthodox  doctrine  of  Scholastic  philosophy. 
The  victory  of  nominalism  which  marked  the  close  of 
the  Scholastic  age  was  the  result  of  the  persistence  with 
which  Ockham  urged  the  claims  of  a  theory  of  knowledge 
and  reality  which  lay  nearer  to  experience  than  that 
which  underlay  the  doctrine  of  realism,  and  at  the  same 
time  recognised  and  reinterpreted  the  truth  which  that 
doctrine  contained  but  had  never  succeeded  in  expressing. 
The  knowledge  of  existence  is  always,  Ockham  contends, 
intuitive,  never  abstract  or  conceptual ;  the  real  is  always 
individual,  never  universal.  The  realists  have  abstracted 
the  universal  or  common  element  from  the  individual 
things  in  which  alone  it  really  exists ;  they  have  hypos- 
tatised  these  abstract  universals,  and  attributed  to  them 
a  higher  degree  of  reality  than  that  possessed  by  the 
individual  things  whose  properties  they  are.  Ockham's 
fundamental  principle  is  that  *  plurality  is  not  to  be 
predicated  without  necessity '  {Non  est  ponenda  pluralitai 


1 6  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

sine  necessitate)^  that  *  entities  are  not  to  be  unnecessarily 
multiplied '  {Entia  non  sunt  multiplicanda  praeter  necessi- 
tatem).  To  predicate  the  independent  or  substantive 
existence  of  the  universal  or  conceptual  is  to  postulate 
plurality  without  necessity.  The  concept  is  not  aliquidy 
but  quoddam  fictum  ;  the  universal  is  only  a  *term'  or 
*  sign,'  not  a  *  thing ' ;  its  '  existence '  is  only  in  the  mind. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  new  nominalism  (or  terminism) 
differs  from  the  old  in  recognising  the  importance  of  the 
concept,  and  is  therefore  indistinguishable  from  the 
doctrine  of  conceptualism.  The  name  or  term  is  not 
without  meaning  or  real  significance  ;  it  is  a  '  sign '  of 
reality,  and  has  its  warrant  in  the  nature  of  reality. 
There  are  real  likenesses  or  agreements  between  the 
individual  things ;  they  are  not  mere  individuals.  As 
Haureau  says,  'The  universal  notion  has  a  real  basis  in 
the  nature  of  things.'  ^  The  concept  signifies  several 
individuals,  whose  *  natural  resemblance '  makes  it, 
though  in  itself  particular,  representative  of  them  all. 
The  discovery  of  these  real  likenesses,  the  investigation 
of  the  actual  warrant  in  the  nature  of  things  for  the 
representative  function  of  the  universal  concept,  is  the 
work  of  science  in  the  modern  sense.  It  is  in  this  sense 
that  Ockham  is,  like  Roger  Bacon,  a  founder  of  English 
experientialism.  Instead  of  reasoning  down  from  uni- 
versal, accepted  on  authority,  he  insists  upon  the  necessity 
of  generalising  from  experience,  of  such  a  study  of  the 
language  of  nature  as  shall  discover  to  us  the  really  signifi- 
cant universals  or  those  which  are  truly  representative  of 
the  actual  nature  of  things.  It  is  a  doctrine  which  we 
find  restated  in  somewhat  modified  forms  by  Hobbes  and 
Berkeley,  as  well  as  by  Bacon  ;  but  none  of  these  later 
statements  of  the  doctrine  is  equal  to  that  of  Ockham  in 
adequacy  and  discrimination. 

^  Op.  cit.,  ii.  467. 


J^ART    I 


THE  SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY 

The  first  task  of  philosophy  in  the  seventeenth  century 
was  to  differentiate  itself  from  theology,  to  assert  the 
freedom  of  the  scientific  intellect  from  the  bondage  of 
authority,  and  to  determine  the  proper  method  of  this 
independent  investigation  of  the  nature  of  reality.  Modern 
philosophy  originates  in  a  change  of  the  centre  of  interest 
from  God  and  the  supernatural  to  nature  and  the  interests 
of  the  secular  life.  Preoccupied  with  the  problem  of  the 
differentiation  of  science  from  theology,  philosophy  is  less 
interested  in  the  question  of  its  own  differentiation  from 
the  sciences.  It  conceives  its  function  as  the  determination 
of  scientific  method  and  the  construction  of  the  system 
of  the  sciences,  rather  than  as  the  solution  of  a  problem 
peculiar  to  itself  and  lying  beyond  the  scope  of  the  sciences 
even  in  their  sum.  It  is  Locke  who  first  clearly  differen- 
tiates and  defines  the  peculiar  problem  of  philosophy  as 
the  investigation  of  the  nature  and  extent  of  human 
knowledge,  the  previous  question  left  unanswered  by  all 
the  special  sciences.  Bacon  and  Hobbes  propose  two 
very  different  answers  to  the  question  of  scientific  method  ; 
and  while  the  former  never  really  gets  beyond  the  question 
of  method,  the  latter  proceeds  to  the  construction  of  a 
general  metaphysical  theory  which,  like  his  theory  of 
ethics,  proved  to  be  of  great  importance  in  stimulating 
others,  within  his  own  century  as  well  as  later,  to 
speculation  on  the  possibilities  of  a  more  adequate 
solution  of  the  problem.  Bacon  contended  for  the 
substitution   of    an    inductive   and    experiential   for   the 

17  B 


1 8  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

deductive  and  dialectical  method  of  Scholastic  philosophy. 
In  his  eyes  a  *  natural  history '  or  a  complete  induction 
of  the  facts  was  the  only  sufficient  basis  of  true  scientific 
explanation  ;  and,  in  spite  of  his  strenuous  polemic  against 
Scholasticism,  he  was  enough  of  a  Scholastic  to  believe 
in  the  existence  of  a  fixed  number  of  fundamental  *  forms ' 
or  species,  and  to  regard  the  function  of  science  as  the 
discovery  of  these  '  forms.'  Hobbes,  on  the  other  hand, 
held  that  the  essential  feature  of  scientific  explanation 
was  rational  demonstration,  and  found  himself  forced  to 
conclude,  as  the  result  of  such  demonstration,  that  matter 
alone  was  real.  The  Cambridge  Platonists,  who  sought 
to  refute  the  materialism  of  Hobbes,  were  even  more 
consistently  rationalistic  in  their  method  than  Hobbes 
himself,  and  endeavoured  to  demonstrate,  after  Plato,  the 
spiritual  constitution  of  reality. 

Locke  followed  Bacon  in  insisting  upon  the  necessity 
of  adopting  what  he  called  *  the  historical  plain  method,' 
which,  as  applied  to  the  facts  of  the  human  understanding, 
is  the  psychological  or  introspective  method.  His  chief 
significance  lies,  however,  as  already  pointed  out,  in  his 
new  statement  of  the  problem  of  philosophy  as  that  of 
the  nature  and  extent  of  human  knowledge  and  the 
difference  between  knowledge  and  opinion  or  belief. 
Both  Bacon  and  Hobbes  had  affirmed  the  distinction,  in 
the  interest  rather  of  scientific  freedom  than  in  that  of 
revealed  religion  ;  but  neither  had  offered  a  reasoned 
account  of  its  nature  and  validity.  Locke's  supreme 
concern  is  for  the  interests  of  the  moral  and  religious  life, 
and  the  exigencies  of  his  theory  of  knowledge  lead  directly 
to  the  formulation  of  the  distinction  in  question — '  our 
knowledge  being  short,  we  want  something  else.'  The 
significance  of  Locke's  new  question  is  not  limited  to  his 
own  century  or  to  English  philosophy  ;  henceforth  its 
paramount  importance  is  matter  of  common  acknow- 
ledgment. 

The  necessity  of  differentiating  ethics,  as  well  as  science 
and  metaphysics,  from  theology  was  forced  upon  the 
modern  mind  by  the  dissolution  of  the  politico-ecclesi- 


THE   SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY    19 

astical  system  of  the  Middle  Ages.  The  assertion  of 
the  independent  authority  of  the  State  raised  the  question 
of  the  basis  of  its  authority  and  the  grounds  of  political 
obedience,  and  recourse  was  had  to  the  Stoic  conception 
of  a  '  law  of  nature '  which  had  been  adopted  by  the 
Roman  jurists.  The  interpretation  of  this  conception 
occupied  the  energies  of  the  moral  and  political  philosophy 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  anxieties  of  the  political 
situation  in  England,  the  rising  tide  of  anarchy  and 
revolution,  forced  upon  Hobbes  the  question  of  the  nature 
and  seat  of  sovereign  authority  ;  and  in  his  eagerness  to 
secure  the  stability  of  the  State  he  could  see  no  alternative 
to  political  absolutism,  a  doctrine  which  Locke  set  himself 
to  refute.  Hobbes  laid  the  foundation  of  this  political 
theory  in  a  doctrine  of  ethical  relativism  and  egoism 
which  shocked  the  moral  sense  of  his  contemporaries, 
and  led  to  the  effort  of  the  ethical  rationalists  to  sub- 
stitute for  it  the  doctrine  of  the  absoluteness  of  moral 
laws  as  expressions  of  the  rational  constitution  of  the 
universe  and  obligatory  upon  all  men  as  rational  beings. 
Thus  the  alternative  between  a  virtually  utilitarian  and 
an  intuitional  theory  of  ethics  is  clearly  stated,  and  the 
issue  between  the  two  views  fairly  joined,  before  the 
close  of  the  century. 


CHAPTER   I 

BACON:   PHILOSOPHY  AND   SCIENTIFIC 
METHOD 

In  no  other  case  in  the  history  of  philosophy  is  it  so 
difficult,  as  perhaps  in  no  other  case  is  it  more  important, 
to  determine  the  relation  between  the  philosopher  and 
the  man.  To  most  of  his  biographers  the  character  of 
Bacon  has  presented  a  hopeless  paradox  and  dualism, 
which  has  served  as  a  text  to  point  the  familiar  moral 
that  the  highest  gifts  may  be  turned  to  the  basest  uses 
and  the  best  insight  blinded  by  worldliness  and  selfishness 
of  motive,  that  the  corruption  of  the  best  is  the  worst. 
The  most  superficial  interpretation  of  the  tragedy  of  his 
career  is  that  offered  by  Macaulay  in  his  famous  essay. 
To  him  it  is  simply  the  exhibition,  on  a  great  scale,  of 
the  disparateness  of  intellectual  and  moral  greatness,  of 
the  falseness  of  the  Socratic  maxim  that  virtue  is  know- 
ledge. Bacon,  that  is  to  say,  lived  two  totally  discon- 
nected lives,  the  intellectual  and  the  moral ;  the  temptations 
which  beset  him  in  the  latter  could  not  possibly  arise 
in  the  former,  nor  could  the  high  ideals  of  the  philosopher 
avail  the  politician  or  the  man.  Such  a  dualism  between 
the  intellectual  and  the  practical  life  is  repudiated  by 
Kuno  Fischer,  who  was  the  first  to  insist  on  the  unity 
of  Bacon's  character  in  the  two  spheres.  But  Kuno 
Fischer  himself  reasserts  the  antithesis  in  a  new  form. 
According  to  his  view,  it  is  to  the  extreme  intellectualism 
of  Bacon's  temperament,  to  his  lack  of  emotional  depth, 
his  poverty  of  natural  human  affection,  the  dispassionate- 
ness of  his  nature,  that  we  must  trace  at  once  his  splendid 
intellectual  achievement  and  the  defects  of  his  moral  and 


BACON  21 

political  life.  His  moral  shortcomings  are  the  defects  of 
his  intellectual  qualities ;  it  is  because  he  was  a  great 
thinker  that  he  was  not  a  great  man.  Even  so  careful 
a  writer  as  R.  W.  Church,  solicitous  as  he  was  to  do 
complete  justice  to  the  character  of  Bacon  as  a  statesman, 
allows  the  dualism  and  contradiction  to  remain,  and  sees 
in  his  political  career  nothing  more  than  the  effort  to 
provide  himself  with  the  wherewithal  to  pursue  the 
higher  ends  of  the  intellectual  life,  and  even  the  constant 
temptation  to  abandon  the  life  of  the  student  of  nature 
for  that  of  the  self-seeking  man  of  affairs.  In  that 
political  activity  which  formed  so  large  a  part  of  Bacon's 
life,  he  recognises  only  *the  distraction  of  his  mind 
between  the  noble  work  on  which  his  soul  was  bent, 
and  the  necessities  of  that  "civil"  or  professional  and 
political  life  by  which  he  had  to  maintain  his  estate.'  ^ 
Yet  he  admits  that  Bacon's  political  life  had  its  own  worthy 
ideals  and  aspirations,  no  less  than  his  intellectual  life. 
*  So  ended  a  career,  than  which  no  other  in  his  time  had 
grander  and  nobler  aims,  aims,  however  mistaken,  for  the 
greatness  and  good  of  England,  aims  for  the  enlargemen 
of  knowledge  and  truth,  and  for  the  benefit  of  mankind.'  ^ 
While  we  must  admit  that  Bacon's  true  greatness  is 
intellectual  rather  than  moral,  and  that  there  is  an  element 
of  truth  in  the  view  of  the  writers  just  mentioned,  yet  it 
is  mechanical  and  superficial  to  separate  the  two  lives 
completely  from  one  another,  and  to  see  in  the  one 
simply  the  opposite  and  the  negation  of  the  other.  In 
spite  of  what  he  himself  may  have  said,  in  moments  of 
professional  and  political  disappointment,  in  disparagement 
of  the  busy  life  of  the  lawyer,  statesman,  and  courtier, 
and  the  assertion  of  his  true  vocation  as  that  of  the  seeker 
after  truth,  it  is  impossible  to  contemplate  his  entire  career 
without  concluding  from  it  that  his  interest  was  no  less 
practical  and  political  than  intellectual  and  theoretic ; 
that  philosophy  was,  if  the  nobler  occupation,  still  only 
the  occupation  of  his  leisure  ;  that,  from  first  to  last,  he 

^  Bacon,  in  '  English  Men  of  Letters,'  p.  lOO.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  171. 


22  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

conceived  his  vocation  to  lie  no  less  in  the  sphere  of 
statesmanship  than  in  that  of  philosophy.,  It  would  have 
been  inconsistent  with  his  practical  and  utilitarian  esti- 
mate of  knowledge  to  depreciate  the  work  of  the  states- 
man, as  he  conceived  it.  If  he  regarded  himself,  in  his 
study  of  nature,  as  the  servant  of  mankind,  as  the  dis- 
coverer of  Nature's  laws  that  he  might  subdue  her  activi- 
ties to  the  uses  of  mankind  and  '  the  relief  of  man's 
estate,'  in  his  political  activity  he  no  less  regarded  himself 
as  the  servant  of  his  country,  discovering  the  path  of  her 
true  and  permanent  well-being,  and  persuading,  if  he 
might,  the  king  and  parliament  to  follow  that  path.  As 
Nichol  says,  *  There  is  no  more  flagrant  freak  of  criti- 
cism than  to  treat  his  public  life  as  that  of  one  playing 
truant  from  his  Academy  or  Porch.  However  he  may 
have  deceived  himself,  half  of  Bacon's  heart  was  set  on 
politics.'  ^  *  His  heart  was  as  much  set  on  establishing  on 
a  basis  of  slowly  broadening  rights  the  foundations  of  the 
Greater  Britain  of  his  dreams  as  on  reading  the  riddles 
of  the  earth  and  sky.'  ^  There  is  no  warrant  for  ascribing 
his  interest  in  politics  to  the  gratification  of  selfish  ambi- 
tion ;  his  aim  was  as  essentially  disinterested  in  the 
political  as  in  the  intellectual  life  :  nor  was  his  ability  less 
conspicuous  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other.  *  Those 
abilities,'  says  William  Rawley,  'which  go  single  in 
other  men  .  .  .  were  all  conjoined  and  met  in  him.'  In 
him  theoretic  insight  and  practical  sagacity  were  singu- 
larly combined  ;  so  far  as  the  union  of  knowledge  with 
ability  to  rule  is  concerned,  he  is  the  most  remarkable 
case,  at  least  in  English  history,  of  the  realisation  of  Plato's 
dream  of  the  philosopher-statesman.  He  realises  at  the 
same  time  his  own  ideal  of  the  true  philosopher  of  the 
modern  type,  who  differs  from  his  ancient  and  mediaeval 
prototypes  in  being  not  a  recluse,  whether  of  the  academic 
or  of  the  monastic  sort,  but  a  man  of  affairs,  an  active 
citizen. 

Nor  is  there  historic  warrant  for  the  undiscriminating 

^  BcKOH,  in  '  Philosophical  Classics,'  vol.  L  p.  3.  '  /did.  L  68. 


BACON  23 

condemnation  which  has  so  often  been  passed  upon  Bacon's 
career  as  a  statesman.  As  Gardiner  has  said,  '  No  one 
to  whom  the  history  of  that  half-century  [the  half- 
century  following  the  period  of  Bacon's  political  activity] 
is  present  can  agree  with  those  numerous  writers  who 
speak  of  Bacon's  political  work  as  inferior  to  his  scientific'  ^ 
The  primary  cause  of  his  failure  as  a  statesman  is  to  be 
sought  rather  in  the  conditions  which  beset  his  political 
activity  than  in  essential  defects  either  of  insight  or  of 
character.  *  An  intellectual  unity,'  says  the  same  writer, 
'  pervades  the  whole  of  the  advice  which  he  gave.  He 
may  sometimes  have  held  his  tongue  when  he  knew 
that  his  counsel  would  be  disregarded,  but  he  never 
prophesied  smooth  things  to  suit  the  wishes  of  those  by 
whom  his  counsel  was  required.'  The  truth  is  that  he 
was  too  much  in  advance  of  his  time  on  all  the  deeper 
questions  of  statesmanship  to  get  the  ear  either  of  the 
sovereign  or  of  parliament,  or  even  to  convince  his 
colleagues  in  authority  of  the  wisdom  of  his  measures. 
Without  fit  instruments  it  is  impossible  for  the  ablest  to 
achieve  political  success,  and  no  statesman  can  command 
the  instruments.  Even  the  worse  than  questionable 
methods  to  which  he  had  recourse  in  his  endeavours  to 
compass  his  political  ends  were,  to  a  considerable  extent, 
dictated  to  him  by  the  conditions  of  his  activity.  As 
Gardiner  has  pointed  out,  '  Bacon  must  look  to  achieve 
a  statesman's  ends  by  the  means  of  a  courtier.'  And 
when  we  remember  that  the  Court  was  that  of  Elizabeth 
and  of  James,  we  shall  not  be  so  ready  to  blame  Bacon 
for  the  subserviency  of  his  language  or  for  the  Machiavel- 
lism  of  his  policy  as  those  have  been  who  have  forgotten 
to  make  allowance  for  this  limiting  condition.  Much 
which  we  should  not  tolerate  in  a  statesman  of  our  own 
day  was  practically  inevitable  in  that  age.  Doubtless  the 
lower  tendencies  of  Bacon's  moral  nature,  as  they  are 
revealed  to  us  in  the  Essays^  and  still  more  nakedly  in  the 
Commentarius  Solutus^  to  which  he  seems  to  have  confided 

^  Art  '  Bacon,'  Diet,  of  Nat.  Biog. 


24  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

his  inmost  thoughts  and  purposes,  made  it  only  too  easy 
for  him  to  fall  in  with  the  prevailing  usages  of  public  life. 
But,  on  the  whole,  his  failure  as  a  statesman  must  be  set 
down  rather  to  his  lack  of  opportunity  than  to  his  un- 
worthy use  of  the  opportunity  which  he  had. 

Even  the  most  damaging  incident  in  his  political  career, 
his  treatment  of  Essex,  assumes  a  somewhat  different 
aspect  in  the  light  of  the  dominant  purpose  of  Bacon's  life 
as  a  statesman.  He  himself  tells  us  that  his  interest  in 
Essex  from  the  first  was  political  rather  than  personal  :  it 
was  his  anticipation  for  him  of  a  great  public  career  that 
attached  Bacon  to  Essex  and,  on  Bacon's  side  at  least, 
formed  the  basis  of  their  friendship.  *  I  held  at  that  time 
my  lord  to  be  the  fittest  instrument  to  do  good  to  the 
State  ;  and  therefore  I  applied  myself  to  him  in  a  manner 
which  I  think  happeneth  rarely  among  men.'  In  acknow- 
ledging the  Earl's  gift  of  land,  he  thus  carefully  limits  the 
extent  of  the  obligation  under  which  he  considers  himself 
to  have  come  :  *  My  lord,  I  see  I  must  be  your  homager 
and  hold  land  of  your  gift ;  but  do  you  know  the  manner 
of  doing  homage  in  law  ?  Always  it  is  with  a  saving  of 
the  faith  to  the  king  and  his  other  lords  ;  and  therefore, 
my  lord,  I  can  be  no  more  yours  than  I  was,  and  it  must  be 
with  the  ancient  savings.  .  .  .  I  reckon  myself  as  a  common 
— and  as  much  as  is  lawful  to  be  enclosed  of  a  common, 
so  much  your  lordship  shall  be  sure  to  have.  ...  I  confess 
I  love  some  things  much  better  than  I  love  your  lordship, 
as  the  queen's  service,  her  quiet  and  contentment,  her 
honour,  her  favour,  the  good  of  my  country,  and  the  like.' 
There  could  have  been  no  clearer  intimation  that,  if 
the  personal  interests  of  friendship  should  ever  conflict 
with  the  higher  claims  of  country  and  devotion  to  the 
Crown,  the  former  must  yield  without  reserve  to  the  latter 
claims.  That  Bacon  did  his  best  to  avert  the  fatal  collision 
between  Essex  and  Elizabeth  by  that  '  faithful  counsel ' 
in  which  he  saw  one  of  the  best  fruits  of  a  true  friendship, 
is  unquestionable.  That,  after  the  failure  of  his  best  efforts, 
he  should  subordinate  what  he  regarded  as  the  lower  to 
what  he  regarded  as  the  higher  obligation,  and  should 


BACON  25 

remind  his  friend  of  *  the  ancient  savings,'  was  thie  only 
course  consistent  with  his  ideal  of  public  duty. 

His  conduct  in  his  judicial  capacity  is  more  difficult  to 
explain  or  excuse.  But  the  extent  of  his  shortcomings 
here  is  to  be  carefully  noted.  The  evidence  seems  to  show 
that,  while  he  fell  in  with  the  prevailing  custom  of  receiv- 
ing presents  from  suitors,  both  while  their  suits  were 
pending  and  afterwards,  and  allowed  himself  to  be  influenced 
by  the  constantly  reiterated  solicitations  of  Buckingham, 
he  never  deliberately  sold  justice,  or  accepted  a  bribe. 
This  is  Gardiner's  conclusion,  even  in  view  of  the 
argument  of  Abbott  and  the  special  investigation  of 
the  single  doubtful  case  by  Heath.  Why,  then,  it  may 
be  asked,  did  he  plead  guilty  to  the  charges  brought 
against  him  ?  The  answer  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact 
that  *he  knew  that  a  trial  of  this  kind  was  a  trial  only 
in  name.'^  Bacon  himself  saw  in  the  accusation  the 
expression  of  a  higher  ideal  of  justice  than  that  which 
had  guided  previous  judicial  practice,  and  there  seems  no 
good  reason  for  refusing  to  accept  his  own  characterisation 
of  it :  'I  was  the  justest  judge  that  was  in  England  these 
fifty  years ;  but  it  was  the  justest  censure  in  parliament 
that  was  these  two  hundred  years.' 

Yet  in  Bacon's  conduct  as  a  judge,  as  well  as  in  his 
treatment  of  Essex,  there  is  revealed  that  'poverty  of  moral 
feeling,'  as  Gardiner  describes  it,  which  is,  in  part  at 
least,  the  secret  of  the  tragedy  of  his  public  life,  and  in 
which  we  must  find  the  explanation  of  his  moral  failure. 
How  otherwise  are  we  to  explain  his  incapacity  to  realise 
the  gravity  of  the  sentence,  the  finality  of  his  degradation 
in  the  eyes  of  his  fellow-countrymen  ?  How  otherwise  can 
we  understand  the  apparent  absence  of  regret,  or  even  of 
reluctance,  in  his  prosecution  of  Essex,  nay,  his  superfluous 
eagerness  to  bring  about  the  ruin  of  his  friend  ?  It  is  here 
that  Kuno  Fischer's  insistence  upon  Bacon's  lack  of  warm 
human  affection,  what  Gardiner  calls  *  the  extraordin- 
arily unemotional  character  of  Bacon's  mind,'  or  what  we 

*  Church,  Bacon,  in  '  English  Men  of  Letters,'  p.  147. 


26  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

may  perhaps  describe  as  his  moral  superficiality,  becomes 
important  as  a  factor  in  the  explanation  of  his  conduct. 
The  whole  passion  of  his  nature  seems  to  have  exhausted 
itself  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of 
the  good  of  his  country,  on  the  other.  To  these  two  great 
ends  all  more  personal  ends  and  interests  were  ruthlessly 
subordinated,  and  the  subordination  does  not  appear  to 
have  cost  him  any  struggle.  It  was,  of  course,  only  in  the 
pursuit  of  the  latter  or  political  end  that  any  real  conflict 
was  liable  to  occur,  and  in  his  devotion  to  this  end  Bacon 
seems  to  have  been  unscrupulous  in  the  choice  of  means. 
Political  failure  was  his  lot,  even  on  these  terms ;  but  it 
had  been  better  to  have  failed  by  reason  of  a  greater  regard 
for  moral  considerations  than  to  have  purchased  the  possi- 
bility of  political  success  at  such  a  moral  sacrifice.  His 
moral  superficiality,  his  lack  of  moral  sensitiveness,  aflFects 
even  his  intellectual  life  and  seriously  narrows  his  vision  of 
truth.  He  tells  us  that  '  the  human  understanding  is  no 
dry  light,  but  receives  an  infusion  from  the  will  and  affec- 
tions ' ;  but  his  own  defect  seems  rather  to  have  been  a  lack 
of  emotion  and  affection  which  made  him  incapable  of 
appreciating  the  significance  of  these  elements  in  human 
life.  How  otherwise  are  we  to  explain  his  lack  of  interest 
in  the  metaphysical  problems  raised  by  the  religious  life, 
the  merely  conventional  character  of  his  own  religion,  its 
lack  of  real  significance  for  his  life,  his  conception  of  poetry 
as  merely  *  feigned  history,'  or  the  mean  prudentialism  of 
so  many  of  his  maxims  of  conduct  in  the  Essays  ?  But  if 
his  moral  superficiality  affects  his  intellectual  as  well  as  his 
practical  life,  it  at  the  same  time  enables  us  to  understand 
how  he  is  greater  in  the  former  than  in  the  latter  sphere. 
And  it  is  with  his  intellectual  achievement  that  we  are 
here  concerned. 

Whatever  may  have  been  the  nature  and  the  limits  of 
his  political  ambition.  Bacon's  intellectual  ambition  was 
simply  limitless.  *I  have  taken  all  knowledge  for  my 
province,'  was  an  exaggerated  statement  of  his  function 
and  vocation  in  the  intellectual  field,  but  a  literal  defini- 


BACON  27 

tion  of  that  function  and  vocation  as  he  himself  conceived 
it.  He  regarded  himself  as  the  inaugurator  of  a  new  era 
in  philosophy,  the  founder  of  a  new  philosophy,  destined 
to  supersede  that  of  Aristotle,  which  had  dominated  the 
thought  of  the  Middle  Ages.  He  trusted  the  judgment 
of  posterity  to  authenticate  a  claim  too  proud  to  be 
acceptable  to  the  men  of  his  own  age.  Nor  was  his 
confidence  misplaced.  The  judgment  of  history  has 
awarded  to  Bacon,  along  with  Descartes,  the  position  of 
founder  of  modern  philosophy.  If  it  has  not  confirmed 
his  condemnation  of  Aristotle  and  of  ancient  Greek 
philosophy,  but  has  rather  seen  in  the  new  philosophy  a 
return  to  the  point  of  view  of  the  old,  a  revival  of  the 
Greek  spirit  of  free  and  independent  inquiry,  it  has  yet 
recognised  in  the  fearless  repudiation  of  authority  which  is 
common  to  Bacon  and  Descartes  the  decisive  break  with 
Scholasticism  and  Mediaevalism,  and  in  Bacon's  proclama- 
tion of  experience  as  the  only  source,  and  of  Induction  as 
the  only  fruitful  method  of  knowledge,  the  watchword  of 
modern  science  and  philosophy,  as  distinguished  from 
Greek  speculation,  on  the  one  hand,  and  from  Scholastic 
dogmatism  and  disputation,  on  the  other. 

The  new  departure  of  Bacon  in  philosophy  thus  takes 
its  place  in  the  wider  movement  of  the  Renaissance  ;  it  is 
the  intellectual  expression  of  that  movement.  The  earlier 
Renaissance,  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries, 
had  been  humanistic  ;  its  interest  was  in  literature  and 
art.  The  later  Renaissance,  of  the  sixteenth  century,  of 
which  Bacon  is  the  immediate  product  and  expositor,  was 
naturalistic  ;  its  predominant  interest  was  in  science,  or 
the  interpretation  of  nature.  The  results  of  this  new 
direction  of  attention,  especially  in  astronomy,  were  of 
the  most  remarkable  character.  The  Copernican  theory 
changed  the  centre  of  man's  world  from  his  own  planet 
to  the  sun  round  which  it  revolved.  The  discovery  of 
America,  which  resulted  from  the  scientific  study  of  the 
earth  and  the  application  of  science  to  navigation,  ex- 
tended the  horizon  of  English  enterprise.  Magnetic  in- 
vestigations suggested  new  possibilities  in  physical  science, 


28  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

while  Harvey's  discovery  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood 
was  epoch-making  for  the  science  of  physiology  and  the  art 
of  medicine. 
^  What  chiefly  impressed  Bacon  was  the  fruitfulness  of 
Lthe  new  knowledge  in  its  applications  to  human  life.  No 
less  than  a  revolution  in  the  conditions  of  life,  he  feels, 
has  been  brought  about  by  the  scientific  activities  of  the 
time  ;  man  is  rapidly  becoming  the  master  and  ruler  b{ 
nature.  The  splendid  fruits  of  the  new  knowledge 
stimulated  him  to  the  great  ambition  of  universalising  this 
dominion  of  man  over  nature.  He  felt  that  it  would  be 
unworthy  of  the  new  age  in  which  he  was  living  to  be 
content  with  anything  short  of  man's  complete  sovereignty. 
*  For  this  great  building  of  the  world  has  been  in  our 
age  wonderfully  opened  and  thorough-lighted  ...  in 
respect  of  our  sea-voyages,  by  which  the  whole  globe  of 
the  earth  has,  after  the  manner  of  the  heavenly  bodies, 
been  many  times  compassed  and  circumnavigated.  .  .  . 
And  this  proficiency  in  navigation  and  discovery  may 
plant  also  great  expectation  of  the  further  proficience  and 
augmentation  of  the  sciences.  .  .  .  For  so  the  prophet 
Daniel,  in  speaking  of  the  latter  times,  foretells  "  that  many 
shall  go  to  and  fro  on  the  earth,  and  knowledge  shall  be 
increased,"  as  if  the  opening  and  thorough  passage  of  the 
world,  and  the  increase  of  knowledge,  were  appointed  to 
be  in  the  same  age.'  ^  Why  should  we  not  *  make  the 
mind  of  man  by  help  of  art  a  match  for  the  nature  of 
things?'  The  true  philosophy  is  the  Ars  inveniendi, 
the  method  at  once  of  discovery  and  invention,  a  science 
of  Nature  which  shall  teach  man  how  to  master  Nature 
and  compel  her  to  serve  his  purposes.  For  the  secret  of 
this  mastery  is  that  obedience  which  is  itself  the  result  of 
knowledge.  *  Nature  is  not  conquered  except  by  obedi- 
ence.' Man  must  be  the  servant  of  Nature  if  he  would 
be  her  lord.  Art  is  but  nature  understood,  and  utilised 
for  human  ends.  '  Human  knowledge  and  human  power 
meet  in   one.'     What   the  antiquated  'Magic'    of  the 

.'  De  Aug.  Set.,  Bk.  ii.  ch.  x. 


BACON  29 

Middle  Ages  professed  to  accomplish  by  virtue  of  a 
mysterious  and  supernatural  craft  is  in  truth  the  result 
of  insight  into  the  nature  of  things,  their  natural  quali- 
ties and  behaviour.  It  is  only  our  ignorance  of  Nature, 
our  foolish  effort  to  compel  her  to  act  unnaturally,  that 
limits  our  power  over  her.  But  to  know  or  under- 
stand nature,  we  must  observe  the  facts  :  experience  is 
here  our  only  guide.  The  secret  of  modern  discovery 
and  invention  is  found  in  the  new  attitude  of  man  to 
nature,  in  the  substitution  of  observation  and  experiment, 
that  is,  of  induction,  for  mere  argument  and  conception, 
or  the  deductive  method  of  the  schools.  Real,  as  distin- 
guished from  nominal  or  verbal,  fruitful  as  distinguished 
from  fruitless  knowledge,  is  possible  only  on  these  terms. 

This  conception  of  the  end  and  method  of  knowledge 
is  opposed  by  Bacon  as  the  new  philosophy  to  the  old 
philosophy  of  the  Greek  and  mediaeval  schools;, and 
since  Aristotle  was  '  the  philosopher '  of  the  Middle 
Ages,  he  especially  opposes  it  to  the  philosophy  of  Aris- 
totle. We  may  therefore  come  at  a  better  understand- 
ing of  the  Baconian  view  of  knowledge  by  contrasting 
it,  under  his  own  guidance,  with  the  Aristotelian  view. 
And  first,  as  regards  the  end  of  knowledge,  or  the  relation 
of  theory  to  practice.  Bacon  seems  to  dissent  entirely 
from  the  doctrine  of  Aristotle.  According  to  Aristotle, 
theoretic  insight  was  not  a  means  to  practical  ends,  but 
itself  the  supreme  end  of  human  life  :  in  speculation  or 
contemplation  of  truth  lies  man's  supreme  good.  Accord- 
ing to  Bacon,  as  we  have  seen,  the  end  of  knowledge  is 
*  the  relief  of  man's  estate ' ;  its  value  lies  in  the 
mastery  over  nature,  the  *  power '  which  it  secures  to 
man.  The  justification  of  science  is  found  by  him  in  its 
fruits  or  practical  applications.  Referring  to  the  Pytha- 
gorean parable  that  the  best  life  was  not  that  of  the  buyers 
and  sellers,  or  even  of  the  competitors,  at  the  Olympian 
games,  but  that  of  the  spectators,  he  says  :  *  But  men 
must  know  that  in  this  theatre  of  man's  life,  it  is  reserved 
only  for  God  and  Angels  to  be  lookers  on.  .  .  .  For  mere 
contemplation  which  should  be  finished  in  itself  without 


30  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

casting  beams  of  heat  and  light  upon  society,  assuredly 
divinity  knows  it  not.'  i  It  is  in  its  practical  utility  that 
he  finds  the  value  of  know^ledge.  Learning  '  is  not  like 
a  lark,  which  can  mount  and  sing  and  please  itself  and 
nothing  else ;  ...  it  rather  partakes  of  the  nature  of  a 
hawk,  which  can  soar  aloft,  and  can  also  descend  and  strike 
upon  its  prey  at  pleasure.' ^  At  the  same  time  he  dis- 
tinguishes carefully  between  the  superficial  utilitarianism 
which  is  impatient  for  the  fruits  of  knowledge  and  the 
patient  temper  which  seeks  primarily  for  light  or  insight, 
and  is  content  to  wait  for  the  harvest  of  works  to  appear 
in  its  due  season.  *  For  though  it  be  true  that  I  am 
principally  in  pursuit  of  works  and  the  active  department 
of  the  sciences,  yet  I  wait  for  harvest-time,  and  do  not 
attempt  to  mow  the  moss  or  to  reap  the  green  corn.  For 
I  well  know  that  axioms  once  rightly  discovered  will 
carry  whole  troops  of  works  along  with  them,  and  produce 
them,  not  here  and  there  one,  but  in  clusters.  And  that 
unreasonable  and  puerile  hurry  to  snatch  by  way  of 
earnest  at  the  first  works  which  come  within  reach,  I 
utterly  condemn  and  reject,  as  an  Atalanta's  apple  that 
hinders  the  race.'  ^  He  accordingly  signalises  the  superior 
importance  of  '  light-giving '  {luctferd)  to  *  fruit-bearing ' 
{fructifera)  experiments,  on  the  ground  that  the  interests 
of  the  larger  utility  are  better  secured  by  the  former  than 
by  the  latter.  It  is  only  in  a  high  and  ultimate  sfcnse,  as 
the  instrument  of  man's  sovereignty  over  nature,  that  a 
utilitarian  estimate  of  knowledge  can  justly  be  attributed 
to  Bacon.*  Nay,  while  he  cannot  separate  its  practical 
fruits  from  knowledge,  or  conceive  of  a  knowledge  which 
should  be  without  such  fruits,  while  he  regards  content- 
ment with  the  satisfaction  of  our  intellectual  curiosity  as 
essentially  selfish,  he  yet  seems  in  the  end  to  agree  with 
the  Aristotelian  estimate  of  pure  knowledge.  *  And  yet 
(to  speak  the  whole  truth),  as  the  uses  of  light  are  infinite, 
in  enabling  us  to  walk,  to  ply  our  arts,  to  read,  to  recognise 

^  De  Aug.  Set,,  Bk.  vii.  ch.  i.  •  litd.,  Bk.  viii.  ch.  ii. 

•  Nov.  Org.,  Plan  of  the  Work,  p.  29. 

*  Cf.  Windelband's  Geschichte  cUr  neueren  Philosophic,  vol.  i.  p.  132. 


BACON  31 

one  another  ;  and  nevertheless  the  very  beholding  of  the 
light  is  itself  a  more  excellent  and  a  fairer  thing  than  all 
the  uses  of  it ; — so  assuredly  the  very  contemplation  of 
things,  as  they  are,  without  superstition  or  imposture, 
error  or  confusion,  is  in  itself  more  vi^orthy  than  all  the 
fruit  of  inventions.'^  *I  am  building  in  the  human 
understanding  a  true  model  of  the  w^orld,  such  as  it  is  in 
fact,  not  such  as  a  man's  own  reason  would  have  it  to  be. 
.  ,  .  Truth  therefore  and  utility  are  here  the  very  same 
things ;  and  works  themselves  are  of  greater  value  as 
pledges  of  truth  than  as  contributing  to  the  comforts  of 
life.'  ^  And  in  the  famous  Essay  on  Truth  he  says  : 
*  Howsoever  these  things  are  thus  in  men's  depraved 
affections,  yet  truth,  which  only  doth  judge  itself,  teacheth 
that  the  inquiry  of  truth,  which  is  the  love-making  or 
wooing  of  it ;  the  knowledge  of  truth,  which  is  the 
presence  of  it  ;  and  the  belief  of  truth,  which  is  the 
enjoying  of  it,  is  the  sovereign  good  of  human  nature.' 


Bacon  represents  his  dissent  from  Aristotle  regarding 
the  method  of  knowledge  as  more  radical  than  that 
regarding  its  end.  For  the  deductive  method  of  Aristotle 
he  would  substitute  the  inductive  method ;  for  the 
conceptual  he  would  substitute  the  experiential,  obser- 
vational, and  experimental  method.  The  syllogism,  he 
holds,  is  '  no  match  for  the  subtlety  of  nature.'  ^  *  The 
syllogism  consists  of  propositions,  propositions  consist  of 
words,  words  are  symbols  of  notions.  Therefore  if  the 
notions  themselves  (which  is  the  root  of  the  matter) 
are  confused  and  over-hastily  abstracted  from  the  facts, 
there  can  be  no  firmness  in  the  superstructure.  Our  only 
hope  therefore  lies  in  a  true  induction.'*  'Men  .  .  .  must 
force  themselves  for  awhile  to  lay  their  notions  by  and 
begin  to  familiarise  themselves  with  facts.'  ^  For  '  there 
is  no  soundness  in  our  notions,  whether  logical  or 
physical.  .  .  .  All  are  fantastical  and  ill-defined.'*     The 

^  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  1 29.  ^  Ibid.,  Bk,  i.  Aph.  124. 

»  Ibid.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  1 3.  *  Ibid,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  14. 

«  Ibid.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  36.  •  Ibid.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  15. 


^1 


32  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

only  valid  notions  are  those  which  are  derived  from  a 
careful  study  of  the  facts  themselves.  We  must  not 
*  anticipate '  nature  by  reading  our  own  preconceptions 
into  the  facts ;  we  must  be  content  to  *  interpret ' 
nature,  we  must  allow  her  to  dictate  to  us  the  conceptions 
which  shall  truly  represent  the  facts.  *  There  are  and 
can  be  only  two  ways  of  searching  into  and  discovering 
truth.  The  one  flies  from  the  senses  and  particulars  to 
the  most  general  axioms,  and  from  these  principles,  the 
truth  of  which  it  takes  for  settled  and  immovable,  proceeds 
to  judgment  and  to  the  discovery  of  middle  axioms.  And 
this  way  is  now  in  fashion.  The  other  derives  axioms 
from  the  senses  and  particulars,  rising  by  a  gradual  and 
unbroken  ascent,  so  that  it  arrives  at  the  most  general 
axioms  last  of  all.  This  is  the  true  way,  but  as  yet 
untried.'  ^  The  former  is  the  method  of  disputation  ;  all 
that  it  secures  is  consistency  with  the  premisses.  The 
latter  is  the  method  of  discovery  ;  if  we  would  ascertain 
the  actual  nature  of  things,  we  must  investigate  the  truth 
of  the  premisses,  or  rather  we  must  patiently  travel  to 
the  true  principles  or  *  axioms '  by  an  unprejudiced  study 
of  the  facts.  Instead  of  attempting  to  reason  out  the 
nature  of  things,  we  must  be  content  to  'elicit  reason 
from  the  facts  by  a  just  and  methodical  process'  of 
interpretation.  The  futile  and  verbal  disputation  which 
results  from  the  employment  of  the  deductive  method  is 
illustrated  by  the  *  degenerate  learning'  of  the  School- 
men, *  who,  having  strong  and  sharp  wits,  and  abundance 
of  leisure,  and  small  variety  of  reading  ;  but  their  wits  being 
shut  up  in  the  cells  of  a  few  authors  (chiefly  Aristotle 
their  dictator)  as  their  persons  were  shut  up  in  the  cells 
of  monasteries  and  colleges ;  and  knowing  little  history, 
either  of  nature  or  time  ;  did  out  of  no  great  quantity 
of  matter,  and  infinite  agitation  of  wit,  spin  out  unto  us 
those  laborious  webs  of  learning  which  are  extant  in  their 
books.  For  the  wit  and  mind  of  man,  if  it  work  upon 
matter,  which   is  the  contemplation  of  the  creatures  of 

*  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  19. 


BACON  33 

God,  worketh  according  to  the  stufF,.and  is  limited  thereby  ; 
but  if  it  work  upon  itself,  as  the  spider  worketh  his  web, 
then  it  is  endless,  and  brings  forth  indeed  cobwebs  of 
learning,  admirable  for  the  fineness  of  thread  and  work, 
but  of  no  substance  or  profit.'  ^ 

Bacon  is  not  to  be  understood,  of  course,  as  accusing 
either  the  Schoolmen  or  their  master  of  following  the 
purely  deductive  method,  or  evolving  a  philosophy  of 
nature  out  of  their  own  minds.  What  he  does  accuse 
them  of  is  rash  generalisation,  hasty  and  unwarranted 
induction.  They  are  too  easily  satisfied  as  to  the  truth 
of  their  premisses  or  axioms  ;  their  chief,  though  not 
their  sole,  interest  is  in  the  deduction  of  the  consequences 
of  these  hastily  accepted  principles.  It  is  not  that  the 
old  philosophy  was  not  based  upon  observation  of  the 
facts,  but  that  the  observation  was  not  wide  enough  or 
varied  enough,  and  that  it  was  not  supplemented  by 
experiment.  Nature  must  be  examined  and  cross- 
examined  ;  the  interrogation  must  proceed  by  '  torture,' 
if  it  is  to  be  successful.  The  true  induction  proceeds 
slowly  and  gradually  in  its  generalisations.  'Then,  and 
then  only,  may  we  hope  well  of  the  sciences,  when  in  a 
just  scale  of  ascent,  and  by  successive  steps  not  interrupted 
or  broken,  we  rise  from  particulars  to  lesser  axioms ;  r.nd 
then  to  middle  axioms,  one  above  the  other ;  and  last  of 
all  to  the  most  general.  For  the  lowest  axioms  differ  but 
slightly  from  bare  experience,  while  the  highest  and  most 
general  (which  we  now  have)  are  notional  and  abstract 
and  without  solidity.  But  the  middle  are  the  true  and 
solid  and  living  axioms,  on  which  depend  the  affairs  and 
fortunes  of  men.  .  .  .  The  understanding  must  not 
therefore  be  supplied  with  wings,  but  rather  hung  with 
weights,  to  keep  it  from  leaping  and  flying.'  ^ 

In  their  haste  to  arrive  at  general  or  '  first '  principles, 
the  Aristotelians  have  fallen  into  the  error  with  which 
Bacon  specially  charges  the  opposite  school,  namely,  the 
*  empirics,'  that  of  an  uncritical  induction  which  proceeds 

^  Advancement  of  Learning,  Works,  iii.  285,  286. 
'  Nm-  Org.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  104. 

C 


34  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

by  *  simple  enumeration '  of  the  instances  which  appear 
to  favour  the  conception  or  theory  adopted,  and  fails  to 
take  account  of  the  *  negative  instances,'  or  those  which, 
if  they  had  been  attended  to,  would  have  led  to  its 
rejection.  For  this  '  childish  '  type  of  induction  Bacon 
substitutes  a  critical  induction  which  is  on  the  outlook 
for  cases  which  contradict  the  theory  suggested  by  a 
superficial  acquaintance  with  the  facts.  *  The  induction 
which  is  to  be  available  for  the  discovery  and  demonstra- 
tion of  sciences  and  arts,  must  analyse  nature  by  proper 
rejections  and  exclusions ;  and  then,  after  a  sufficient 
number  of  negatives,  come  to  a  conclusion  on  the  affirma- 
tive instances.'  ^  It  is  only  to  such  a  careful  scrutiny  of 
the  facts  that  experience  will  yield  the  secret  of  the 
nature  of  things.  If  the  *  men  of  dogmas '  or  '  reasoners ' 
*  resemble  spiders,  who  make  cobwebs  out  of  their  own 
substance,'  the  *  men  of  experiment '  are  '  like  the  ant : 
they  only  collect  and  use.'  Bacon  finds  the  analogue  of 
the  true  method  in  the  example  of  the  bee,  which  '  takes 
a  middle  course ;  it  gathers  its  material  from  the  flowers 
of  the  garden  and  of  the  field,  but  transforms  and  digests 
it  by  a  power  of  its  own.  Not  unlike  this  is  the  true 
business  of  philosophy ;  for  it  neither  relies  solely  or 
chiefly  on  the  powers  of  the  mind,  nor  does  it  take  the 
matter  which  it  gathers  from  natural  history  and  mechani- 
cal experiments  and  lay  it  up  in  the  memory  whole,  as  it 
finds  it  ;  but  lays  it  up  in  the  understanding  altered  and 
digested.  Therefore  from  a  closer  and  purer  league 
between  these  two  faculties,  the  experimental  and  the 
rational  (such  as  has  never  yet  been  made),  much  may  be 
hoped.'  ^  This  reconciliation  between  a  true  rationalism 
and  a  true  empiricism  was  clearly  Bacon's  ambition  from 
the  first,  and  the  source  of  peculiar  satisfaction  when  he 
finally  accomplished  it.  In  a  letter  to  Burghley  in  1592 
he  writes  :  *  If  I  could  purge  it  [knowledge]  of  two  sorts 
of  rovers,  whereof  the  one  with  frivolous  disputations, 
confutations,  and  verbosities,  the  other  with  blind  experi- 

^  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  I  Aph.  105.  •  IMcL,  Bk.  L  Aph.  95. 


BACON  35 

ments  and  auricular  traditions  and  impostures,  hath  com- 
mitted so  many  spoils,  I  hope  I  should  bring  in  industrious 
observations  and  profitable  inventions  and  discoveries — the 
best  state  of  that  province.'  And  in  the  Preface  to  the 
Novum  Organum  he  says  :  *  I  suppose  that  I  have  established 
for  ever  a  true  and  lawful  marriage  between  the  empirical 
and  the  rational  faculty,  the  unkind  and  ill-starred  divorce 
of  which  has  thrown  into  confusion  all  the  affairs  of  the 
human  family.' 

The  true  method  of  knowledge  is  the  Interpretation,  1 
the  false  method  is  the  Anticipation  of  nature.  We  must 
derive  our  notions  from  the  facts  of  experience,  not  deduce 
the  facts  from  our  preconceived  notions.  We  must  come 
to  nature  with  an  open  mind,  with  the  docility  of  the 
little  child ;  for  the  kingdom  of  knowledge,  like  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  is  entered  only  sub  persona  infantis. 
Instead  of  seeing  in  things  the  reflection  of  ourselves, 
and  interpreting  the  world  after  the  analogy  of  man,  we 
must  be  content  to  let  our  minds  reflect  the  nature  of 
things,  and  to  interpret  them  after  the  analogy  of  the 
universe.  Bacon's  conception  of  knowledge  is  that  it  is 
the  copy  or  reproduction  of  reality  ;  the  mind — the  sense 
and  the  intellect — is,  or  may  become,  a  true  mirrcr  of 
things.  The  error,  the  distortion  of  reality,  results  from 
our  refusal  to  observe  with  sufficient  care,  and  to  be 
content  with  the  discovery  of  the  order  of  things  as  that 
order  is  revealed  to  careful  observation  and  experiment. 
*  All  depends  on  keeping  the  eye  steadily  fixed  on  the 
facts  of  nature  and  so  receiving  their  images  simply  as 
they  are.  For  God  forbid  that  we  should  give  out  a 
dream  of  our  own  imagination  for  a  pattern  of  the  world  ; 
rather  may  He  graciously  grant  to  us  to  write  an  apocalypse 
or  true  vision  of  the  footsteps  of  the  Creator  imprinted  on 
His  creatures.'  ^ 

But  there  are  certain  defects  in  the  mind  as  a  mirror 
of  the   world,  defects  partly  innate,  partly  adventitious. 

^  Nov.  Org.,  Plan  of  the  Work,  pp.  32,  33. 


36  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

*  The  human  understanding  is  like  a  false  mirror,  which, 
receiving  rays  irregularly,  distorts  and  discolours  the 
nature  of  things  by  mingling  its  own  nature  with  it.'  ^ 

*  As  an  uneven  mirror  distorts  the  rays  of  objects  accord- 
ing to  its  own  figure  and  section,  so  the  mind,  when  it 
receives  impressions  of  objects  through  the  sense,  cannot 
be  trusted  to  report  them  truly,  but  in  forming  its  notions 
mixes  up  its  own  nature  with  the  nature  of  things."^ 
These  false  images,  reflections  of  the  mind  itself,  which, 
coming  between  the  mind  and  reality,  vitiate  knowledge. 
Bacon  calls  *  Idols '  {etStoXa))  and  he  distinguishes  four 
chief  classes  of  them.  First  there  are  the  Idols  of  the 
Tribe  {Ido/a  Tribus)^  which  '  have  their  foundation  in 
human  nature  itself,  and  in  the  tribe  or  race  of  men,'  as, 
for  example,  the  tendency  to  observe  the  instances  favour- 
able to  any  opinion  we  have  adopted  and  to  ignore  those 
which  are  unfavourable  to  it,  a  tendency  which  explains 
the  hold  of  superstitions  upon  the  human  mind  as  well  as 
the  unwarranted  inductions  of  the  Aristotelian  philo- 
sophers ;  or  the  tendency  to  believe  that  things  are  as 
we  wish  them  to  be,  rather  than  as  they  are.  Secondly, 
there  are  the  Idols  of  the  Cave  [Idola  Specus\  which  *  take 
their  rise  in  the  peculiar  constitution,  mental  or  bodily,  of 
each  individual,  and  also  in  education,  habit,  and  accident.' 
For  example,  *some  minds  are  stronger  and  apter  to  mark 
the  differences  of  things,  others  to  mark  their  resem- 
blances ' ;  some  are  dominated  by  the  love  of  antiquity, 
others  by  the  love  of  novelty  ;  the  bias  of  a  special  science 
or  speculation  affects  its  devotees.  Thirdly,  the  Idols  of 
the  Market-place  {Idola  Fori)  are  *  the  most  troublesome  of 
all :  idols  which  have  crept  into  the  understanding  through 
the  alliances  of  words  and  names,'  and  are  so  called  be- 
cause they  are  formed  by  '  the  intercourse  and  association 
of  men  with  each  other,'  and  which  cause  that  acceptance 
of  verbal  fictions  and  confused  notions  which  is  character- 
istic of  the  vulgar  understanding.  Finally  there  are  the 
Idols  of  the  Theatre  {Idola  Theatri)  which,  like  the  Idols 

*  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  41.  2  Ibid.,  Plan  of  the  Work,  p.  27. 


BACON  37 

of  the  Market-place,  are  not  innate,  but  are  '  received 
into  the  mind  from  the  play-books  of  philosophical  systems 
and  the  perverted  rules  of  demonstration.'  *  These  I 
call  Idols  of  the  Theatre,  because  in  my  judgment  all  the 
received  systems  are  but  so  many  stage-plays,  representing 
worlds  of  their  own  creation  after  an  unreal  and  scenic 
fashion.'  They  consist  not  only  of  wrong  systems,  but 
of  wrong  methods  of  philosophy  ;  and  from  the  latter 
point  of  view  Bacon  distinguishes  three  schools  of  philo- 
sophy, each  of  which  is  to  be  carefully  guarded  against  by 
the  mind  that  would  discover  the  actual  nature  of  things : 
the  Rational  or  Sophistical,  represented  by  Aristotle  and 
the  Schoolmen  ;  the  Empirical,  based  upon  an  uncritical 
and  vague  experience ;  and  the  Superstitious,  which 
confuses  theology  with  philosophy,  and  which  he  connects 
especially  with  the  names  of  Pythagoras  and  Plato. 

In  spite,  however,  of  Bacon's  determination  to  approach 
Nature  in  the  spirit  of  the  little  child,  with  a  mind  emptied 
of  all  preconceptions,  and  especially  the  preconceptions 
derived  from  the  philosophy  of  Aristotle  as  interpreted  by 
the  Schoolmen,  he  remained  to  the  end  in  subjection  to 
one  great  '  Idol  of  the  Theatre.'  *  No  part  of  his  design 
is  more  definite,'  says  Nichol,  *  than  the  determination, 
characteristic  of  his  age,  to  break  with  the  Past,  although 
no  part  of  it  was  more  incompletely  fulfilled.'^  *The 
position  of  Bacon  '  is  in  reality,  as  Fowler  remarks,  '  mid- 
way between  Scholasticism,  on  one  side,  and  Modern 
Philosophy  and  Science,  on  the  other.'  ^  This  is  especi- 
ally true  of  that  doctrine  of  *  Forms '  which  governs  his 
entire  procedure  in  the  investigation  of  nature.  Accept- 
ing without  question  Aristotle's  classification  of  causes  as 
material,  efficient,  formal  and  final,  he  assigns  the  investi- 
gation of  the  two  former  to  Physics  and  that  of  the  two 
latter  to  Metaphysics.  The  discovery  of  the  material  and 
efficient  causes  he  regards  as  a  mere  preliminary  to  the 
discovery  of  the  formal  and  final ;  the  former  are  only  the 

^  Bacon,  in  '  Philosophical  Classics,'  vol.  ii.  pp.  3,  4. 

•  Pref.  to  edition  oi  Nov.  Org.,  p.  vi.  , 


38  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

phenomenal,  the  latter  the  real  and  essential  aspect  of  the 
case.  The  Form  is  what  differentiates  one  thing  from 
others,  that  which  makes  it  what  it  is,  its  essential  and 
characteristic  being.  'The  Form  of  a  thing'  he  says, 
*  is  the  very  thing  itself,  and  the  thing  differs  from  the 
form  no  otherwise  than  as  the  apparent  differs  from  the 
real,  or  the  external  from  the  internal,  or  the  thing  in 
reference  to  man  from  the  thing  in  reference  to  the 
universe.'  ^  In  this  Form  of  the  thing  he  sees  the  clue  to 
the  secret  of  its  production.  '  On  a  given  body  to  generate 
and  superinduce  a  new  nature  or  new  natures,  is  the  work 
and  aim  of  human  power.' ^  Bacon  warns  us,  however, 
not  to  confuse  these  ultimate  '  forms '  with  the  more 
obvious  qualities  which  we  are  apt  to  regard  as  primary  or 
essential.  '  When  I  assign  so  prominent  a  part  to  Forms, 
I  cannot  too  often  warn  and  admonish  men  against  apply- 
ing what  I  say  to  those  forms  to  which  their  thoughts  and 
contemplations  have  hitherto  been  accustomed.'^  The 
Form  of  Heat,  for  example,  is  found  in  something  appa- 
rently quite  different  from  Heat  itself,  namely,  certain 
modes  of  motion.  These  Forms  constitute  the  alphabet 
of  nature,  out  of  the  manifold  combinations  of  whose 
letters  all  the  variety  of  its  phenomena  may  be  explained. 
Bacon's  ultimate  category,  it  thus  appears,  is  not  cause 
but  substance.  He  conceives  the  world  as  a  statical 
combination  of  elements  rather  than  as  a  development  of 
effects  from  causes.  The  Natural  History  which  investi- 
gates the  causal  sequence  of  the  phenomena  is  only  the 
preparation  for  the  Natural  Philosophy  which  traces  the 
complexities  of  the  apparent  qualities  to  the  few  simple 
Forms  or  real  differences  which  belong  to  the  substance 
of  things.  Bacon's  point  of  view  is  that  of  Scholastic 
realism,  rather  than  that  of  modern  science.  We  are 
not  to  be  misled  by  his  identification  of  the  Form  with 
the  Law  of  the  thing,  as  when  he  says  that  '  the  Form 
of  Heat  or  the  Form  of  Light  is  the  same  thing  as  the 
Law  of  Heat  or  the  Law  of  Light,'  *  or  when  he  speaks 

*  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  ii.  Aph.  13.  ^  /^y^^  j^k.  ii.  Aph.  i. 

»  Ibid.,  Bk.  ii.  Aph.  17.  *  Ibid.,  Bk.  ii.  Aph.  17. 


BACON  39 

of  nature's  'fundamental  and  universal  laws  which  con- 
stitute Forms,'  or  says  that  *  though  in  nature  nothing 
really  exists  beside  individual  bodies,  performing  pure 
individual  acts  according  to  a  fixed  law,  yet  in  philosophy 
this  very  law,  and  the  investigation,  discovery,  and  ex- 
planation of  it,  is  the  foundation  as  well  of  knowledge  as 
of  operation.  And  it  is  this  law,  with  its  clauses,  that  I 
mean  when  I  speak  of  Forms.''  ^  '  Law '  is  clearly  used, 
in  these  passages,  not  in  the  modern  scientific  sense  of  a 
uniformity  of  causal  sequence  between  phenomena  or 
occurrences,  but  in  the  sense  of  a  permanent  and  iden- 
tical essence  which  is  to  be  found  beneath  the  apparent 
variety,  a  real  simplicity  beneath  the  apparent  complexity 
of  nature  ;  the  '  law '  of  the  thing  is  the  dictation  of  its 

*  form '  or  essence  to  its  properties  and  accidents. 

Bacon  comes  nearer  to  the  point  of  view  of  modern 
science  in  his  doctrines  of '  latent  schematism  '  and  *  latent 
process,'  in  which  he  recognises  the  continuity  of  all 
phenomena  and  the  molecular  constitution  of  matter.  By 
the  '  latent  schematism '  he  means  the  subtle  and  supra- 
sensible  structure  or  configuration  of  the  material  particles  ; 
by  the  '  latent  process,'  the  no  less  subtle  steps  by  which 
the  movement  of  those  particles,  or  *  natures,'  takes  place. 
The  chief  interest  of  these  conceptions  lies  in  the  re- 
cognition which  they  imply  of  the  dynamical  aspect  of 
nature,  so  far  as  concrete  things  are  concerned.  They 
appear,  however,  almost  like  an  interlude  in  the  exposition 
of  Bacon's  serious  doctrine  ;  his  real  interest,  it  is  clear,  is 
in  the  abstract  and  formal  aspect  of  reality,  in  the  problem 
of  substance  rather  than  in  that  of  cause. 

It  is  in  his  elaboration  of  the  methods  of  reducing  the 
apparent  complexity  of  nature  to  the  simplicity  of  its 
fundamental  Forms  that  Bacon  makes  his  great  contri- 
bution   to   the    logic    of    induction.     As    Fowler    says, 

*  Inductive  Logic,  that  is,  the  systematic  analysis  and 
arrangement  of  inductive  evidence,  as  distinct  from  the 

^  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  ii.  Aph.  2. 


40  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

natural  induction  which  all  men  practise,  is  almost  as  much 
the  invention  of  Bacon  as  Deductive  Logic  is  that  of 
Aristotle.'^  The Ji/um  labyrinthi  is  found  in  the  selection 
of  instances  according  to  a  principle ;  w^ithout  this  clue 
wre  shall  never  succeed  in  differentiating  the  essential  from 
the  unessential  elements.  The  first  step  is  the  preparation 
of  a  '  Natural  and  Experimental  History,  sufficient  and 
good.'  We  must  next  construct  *  Tables  and  Arrange- 
ments of  Instances,  in  such  a  method  and  order  that  the 
understanding  may  be  able  to  deal  with  them ' ;  and 
finally  we  must  interpret  these  instances  by  *  true  and 
legitimate  induction,  which  is  the  very  key  of  interpreta- 
tion.'2 

Bacon  formulates  three  inductive  methods  or,  as  he  calls 
them,  *  Tables  of  Presentation '  :  the  Table  of  Essence 
and  Presence,  the  Table  of  Deviation  or  of  Absence  in 
Proximity,  and  the  Table  of  Degrees  or  the  Table  of  Com- 
parison. They  correspond  closely  with  Mill's  Methods 
of  Agreement,  of  Difference,  and  of  Concomitant  Varia- 
tions.  'I'ne  Table  of  Essence  and  Presence  consists  in 
*  a  muster  or  presentation  before  the  understanding  of  all 
known  instances  which  agree  in  the  same  nature,  though 
in  substance  the  most  unlike,'  for  example,  the  heat  of  the 
rays  of  the  sun,  of  flame,  and  of  animal  bodies.  The 
Table  of  Deviation,  or  of  Absence  in  Proximity,  consists 
of  'a  presentation  to  the  understanding  of  instances  m 
which  the  given  nature  is  wanting ;  because  the  Form 
.  .  .  ought  no  less  to  be  absent  when  the  given  nature  is 
absent,  than  present  when  it  is  present.  But  to  note  all 
these  would  be  endless.  The  negatives  should  therefore 
be  subjoined  to  the  affirmatives,  and  the  absence  of  the 
given  nature  inquired  of  in  those  subjects  only  that  are 
most  akin  to  the  others  in  which  it  is  present  and  forth- 
coming.' Of  this  Table  Bacon  gives  as  examples  the 
rays  of  the  moon  and  of  stars  and  comets,  which  *are 
found  not  to  be  hot  to  the  touch.'  In  the  Table  of 
Degrees  or  of  Comparison  *  we  must  make  a  presentation 

^  Bacon,  in  '  English  Philosophers,'  p.  91. 
*  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  ii.  Aph.  ID. 


BACON  41 

to  the  understanding  of  instances  in  which  the  nature 
under  inquiry  is  found  in  different  degrees,  more  or  less ; 
which  must  be  done  by  making  a  comparison  either  of  its 
increase  and  decrease  in  the  same  subject,  or  of  its  amount 
in  diflFerent  subjects,  as  compared  one  with  another.  For 
...  no  nature  can  be  taken  as  the  true  form,  unless  it 
always  decrease  when  the  nature  in  question  decreases, 
and  in  like  manner  always  increase  when  the  nature  in 
question  increases.'  One  of  Bacon's  examples  of  this 
Table  is  that  *  the  less  the  mass  of  a  body,  the  sooner  is 
it  heated  by  the  approach  of  a  hot  body ;  which  shows 
that  all  heat  of  which  we  have  experience  is  in  some  sort 
opposed  to  tangible  matter.'  In  the  use  of  these  methods 
the  common  prerequisite  is  the  adoption  of  a  negative  and 
critical  attitude.  'If  the  mind  attempt  this  affirmatively 
from  the  first,  as  when  left  to  itself  it  is  always  wont  to  do, 
the  result  will  be  fancies  and  guesses  and  notions  ill  defined, 
and  axioms  that  must  be  mended  every  day  .  .  .  To  God, 
truly,  the  Giver  and  Architect  of  Forms,  and  it  may  be  to 
the  angels  and  higher  intelligences,  it  belongs  to  have  an 
affirmative  knowledge  of  forms  immediately,  and  from  the 
first  contemplation.  But  this  assuredly  is  more  than  man 
can  do,  to  whom  it  is  granted  only  to  proceed  at  first  by 
negatives,  and  at  last  to  end  in  affirmatives,  after  exclusion 
has  been  exhausted.'^  This  insistence  upon  the  import- 
ance of  taking  account  of  the  *  negative  instances,'  the 
substitution  of  a  critical  induction  for  the  uncritical  pro- 
cedure *  by  simple  enumeration  '  of  earlier  scientific  theory 
and  practice,  is,  as  we  have  seen,  the  distinctive  and 
original  feature  of  the  Baconian  method. 

It  is  in  this  method  that,  as  he  himself  knew.  Bacon's 
real  contribution  to  knowledge  consists,  and  if  we  are  to 
judge  fairly  of  his  work  as  a  thinker,  it  is  necessary  to 
keep  in  mind  this  limitation  of  his  intellectual  ambition. 
Rdmusat  quotes  Laplace's  criticism  that  *  Bacon  has 
given  for  the  investigation  of  truth  precept  but  not 
example.'     Such  a  criticism,  supported   as  it  is    by  the 

1  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  ii.  Aph.  15. 


42  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

many  instances  of  scientific  error  to  be  found  in  Bacon'*s 
works,  is  essentially  unjust.  As  Kuno  Fischer  has  said, 
*  According  to  the  judgment  of  De  Maistre,  Bacon  was 
not  a  scientific  genius.  Why  ?  Because  he  made  no 
discoveries  himself,  but  only  wrote  on  the  art  of  making 
discoveries ;  because  he  was  a  theorist  with  respect  to 
this  art.  We  may  as  well  reproach  the  writer  on  aesthe- 
tics for  not  being  himself  an  artist.'^  Bacon's  own 
professions  anticipate  and  answer  all  such  criticism.  *I 
am  but  a  trumpeter,  not  a  combatant.'  *The  endeavours 
and  industry  of  a  private  man  can  be  but  as  an  image 
in  a  crossway,  that  may  point  at  the  way,  but  cannot 
go  it.'  'I  have  provided  the  machine,  but  the  stuff  must 
be  gathered  from  the  facts  of  nature.'  ^  Even  as  regards 
the  finality  of  his  method  or  *  machine,'  his  claims  are 
not  extreme.  *  Nor  do  I  mean  to  say  that  no  improve- 
ment can  be  made  upon  these  [rules  of  interpretation]. 
On  the  contrary,  I  that  regard  the  mind  not  only  in  its 
own  faculties,  but  in  its  connection  with  things,  must 
needs  hold  that  the  art  of  discovery  may  advance  as  dis- 
coveries advance.'  ^ 

Still  it  is  not  to  be  questioned  that  Bacon  made  great 
claims  for  his  method,  and  that  he  regarded  it  as  in  its 
essential  features  the  final  method  of  scientific  investi- 
gation. He  evidently  thought  that,  by  putting  into  men's 
hands  this  invaluable  instrument,  he  had  not  only  ensured 
the  progress  of  man's  knowledge,  and  therefore  of  his 
dominion  over  nature,  but  had  once  for  all  reduced  men's 
intellectual  abilities  to  a  common  level.  What  had 
hitherto  depended  upon  the  superior  wit  of  the  individual 
would  depend  henceforth  only  upon  the  patient  and 
accurate  use  of  an  instrument  which  was  equally  available 
for  all.  *  The  course  I  propose  for  the  discovery  of 
sciences  is  such  as  leaves  but  little  to  the  acuteness  and 
strength  of  wits,  but  places  all  wits  and  understandings 
nearly  on  a  level.'*  What  are  we  to  make  of  this  tre- 
mendous claim  ?     The  only  possible  answer  is  that,  apart 

*  Bacon,  Eng.  transl.,  p.  337  (1st  ed.).  *  Nov.  Org.,  Dedication. 

»  Ibid.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  130.  *  Ibid.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  61. 


BACON  43 

altogether  from  the  merits  or  demerits  of  his  method, 
Bacon's  enterprise  was  fundamentally  mistaken  and  fore- 
doomed to  failure.  It  is  futile  to  attempt  to  reduce  the 
procedure  of  the  scientific  intellect  to  rules  by  following 
which  every  investigator  will  be  practically  on  the  same 
level.  The  facts  do  not  suggest  their  own  interpretation  ; 
the  initiative  always  lies  with  the  observing  mind.  Bacon 
himself  accentuates  the  idea  of  *  interrogation,'  as  dis- 
tinguished from  '  anticipation '  of  nature  ;  but  he  did  not 
realise  that  our  success  in  compelling  nature  to  give  us 
illuminating  answers  depends  mainly  upon  our  skill  in 
framing  the  questions,  that  a  good  question  is  more  than 
half  the  answer.  Hypotheses  non  Jingo  was  the  great  maxim 
of  Bacon,  no  less  than  of  Newton.  But,  as  Mill's  more 
adequate  analysis  of  the  method  of  scientific  discovery  has 
clearly  shown,  and  as  the  history  of  science  on  every  page 
confirms,  it  is  in  the  framing  and  testing  of  likely  hypo- 
theses, and  not  in  the  accumulation  of  facts,  that  the  work 
of  science  really  consists.  We  must,  in  this  sense,  antici- 
pate nature  if  we  are  ever  to  arrive  at  its  true  inter- 
pretation. The  only  explanation  of  Bacon's  failure  to 
see  this,  to  us  so  obvious,  element  in  scientific  procedure 
is  to  be  found  in  his  preoccupation  with  the  idea  of  the 
mind  as  the  passive  reflection  of  reality,  in  his  r'^volt 
against  the  a  priori  or  deductive  and  conceptual  method 
of  the  Schoolmen,  and  in  his  determination  to  substitute 
for  this  a  thoroughly  empirical  and  inductive  method, 
as  well  as  in  his  horror  of  the  unrestrained  use  of  the 
imagination  which  characterised  the  nature-philosophies 
of  the  Italian  Renaissance.  It  is  these  historical  con- 
ditions of  his  thought,  rather  than  any  essential  one-sided- 
ness  of  Bacon  as  a  thinker,  that  must  be  held  responsible 
for  the  limitations  which  make  his  philosophy  of  science 
so  unsatisfactory  to  us. 

Bacon  himself  seems  to  have  recognised  the  necessity 
of  supplementing  the  use  of  his  methods  by  some  such 
activity  of  the  scientific  intellect  as  that  which  we  call  the 
employment  of  Hypothesis.  While  he  protests  against 
the  futility  of  the  procedure  of  the  Intellectus  sibi  permissusy 


44  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

he  yet  concedes  the  legitimacy  of  this  independent  activity, 
as  likely  to  result  in  truth  as  well  as  error.  '  Since  truth 
will  sooner  come  out  from  error  than  from  confusion,  I 
think  it  expedient  that  the  understanding  should  have 
permission  {ut  fiat  permmio  'intellectus\  after  the  three 
Tables  of  First  Presentation  .  .  .  have  been  made  and 
weighed,  to  make  an  essay  of  the  Interpretation  of  Nature 
in  the  affirmative  way.  .  .  .  Which  kind  of  tentative 
process  I  call  the  Indulgence  of  the  Understanding  {per- 
mmionem  intellectus\  or  the  Incomplete  Interpretation 
{interpretat'tonem  inchoatam)^  or  the  First  Vintage.'^ 
Similarly,  in  the  De  Augmentis^  he  speaks  of  *  learned 
experience,'  '  which  is  rather  a  sagacity  and  a  kind  of 
hunting  by  scent,  than  a  science.'  ^  Moreover,  he  con- 
stantly makes  use  of  the  method  of  Analogy,  and,  as  Kuno 
Fischer  remarks,  '  in  truth  every  analogy  is  an  ant'tcipatio 
mentis.*  It  has  even  been  thought  by  some  that  Bacon 
lost  confidence  in  his  own  methods  as  time  passed,  and  he 
observed  their  failure  to  yield  results ;  and  there  is  a 
striking  passage  in  one  of  his  latest  writings  (the  Prodromi) 
which  seems  to  favour  this  view.  He  there  admits  the 
possibility  of  scientific  discovery  without  the  use  of  his 
Organum,  or  Rule  of  Interpretation,  so  long  as  we  reject 
the  Idols  and  apply  ourselves  to  the  first-hand  interpreta- 
tion of  nature.*  It  is  also  significant  that  the  fifth  part 
of  the  *  great  Instauration  '  was  to  consist  of  *  such  things 
as  I  have  myself  discovered,  proved,  or  added — not,  how- 
ever, according  to  the  true  rules  and  methods  of  interpreta- 
tion, but  by  the  ordinary  use  of  the  understanding  in 
inquiring  and  discovering.'  These  truths,  he  remarks, 
*will  serve  in  the  meantime  for  wayside  inns,  in  which 
the  mind  may  rest  and  refresh  itself  on  its  journey  to 
more  certain  conclusions.'  *  Had  he  perceived  the  organic 
connection  between  these  tentatively  accepted  truths  and 
the  methods  of  establishing  scientific  truth  as  such.  Bacon 
would  have  succeeded  in  formulating  the  complete  method 
of  the  interpretation  of  nature. 

^  Nov.  Org.,  Bk.  .ii.  Aph.  20.  '  De  Aug.,  Bk.  v.  chap.  ii. 

*  Works,  ii.  691.  *  Nov.  Org.,  Plan  of  the  Work,  pp.  31,  32. 


BACON  45 

But,  apart  from  the  exaggerated  importance  which  he 
ascribes  to  Method,  Bacon's  statement  of  the  methods 
followed  by  science  in  testing  the  validity  of  the  concep- 
tions hypothetically  accepted  at  the  outset  is  seriously 
defective.  As  we  have  seen,  the  object  of  the  entire 
process  of  exclusions  is  the  discovery  of  the  *  form  '  which 
constitutes  the  essence  of  the  phenomenon  under  investiga- 
tion ;  and  the  underlying  assumption  is  that  nature,  truly 
understood,  consists  of  a  finite,  and  indeed  of  a  compara- 
tively small  number  of  such  essential  forms,  which 
together  make  up  what  he  calls  the  '  alphabet  of  nature.' 
The  validity  of  the  process  really  depends  upon  the  truth 
of  the  initial  assumption  as  to  the  exhaustiveness  of  our 
knowledge  of  natural  forms  or  species.  No  account  is 
taken  of  what  Mill  calls  the  '  plurality  of  causes,'  on  the 
one  hand,  or  of  the  possibility  of  reducing  what  seem 
ultimate  principles  to  principles  still  more  ultimate,  on 
the  other.  As  Ellis  remarks,  in  his  general  introduction 
to  the  philosophical  works  of  Bacon,^  the  *  alphabet  of 
the  universe '  of  which  Bacon  dreamed  *  could  at  best  be 
only  an  alphabet  of  the  present  state  of  knowledge.' 

Bacon  seems  himself  to  have  felt  that  his  account  of 
the  Inductive  Method,  as  it  stood,  was  inadequate,  for 
he  intimates  his  intention  to  add  an  account  of  the 
several '  aids '  [adminicula)  of  which  it  stands  in  need.  The 
only  one  of  these,  however,  which  he  works  out  is  that  of 
the  '  prerogative  instances,'  that  is,  instances  of  the 
phenomenon  under  consideration  which  are  specially  in- 
structive or  suggestive  to  the  investigator.  Such  examples 
are  '  solitary,'  *  migratory,'  *  striking,'  *  clandestine,'  '  bor- 
dering,' and,  most  important  of  all,  '  instances  of  the 
finger-post '  or  *  crucial  instances.'  It  cannot,  however, 
be  said  that  what  Bacon  says  under  these  heads  adds  sub- 
stantially to  his  general  statement  of  the  methods ;  and 
the  fact  that  he  left  the  account  of  the  'aids'  thus 
incomplete  inevitably  suggests  the  inference  that,  as  time 
passed,  he  lost  interest,  if  not  confidence,  in  the  methods 
themselves.     'His  trust  in  the  New  Natural   History^' 

^  Works,  i.  39. 


46  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

says  Abbott,  'appears  to  increase  in  proportion  to  his 
distrust  of  the  New  Induction. '  ^  In  the  Dedication 
of  the  Phenomena  of  the  Universe^  published  in  1622, 
he  tells  us  that  *  a  small  and  well-ordered  Natural  History 
is  the  key  of  all  knowledge ' ;  and  in  the  Preface  to  the 
third  part  of  the  Instauratio  Magna  he  says  :  *  It  comes 
therefore  to  this,  that  my  Organum,  even  if  it  were 
completed,  would  not  without  the  Natural  History  much 
advance  the  Instauration  of  the  sciences,  whereas  the 
Natural  History  without  the  Organum  would  advance  it 
not  a  little.'  But  a  collection  of  facts  which  is  not 
informed  by  some  anticipation  of  their  theoretic  signi- 
ficance can  have  little,  if  any,  scientific  value ;  here,  as 
elsewhere,  deductive  and  inductive  reasoning,  hypothesis 
and  verification,  must  go  together.  If  a  true  natural 
philosophy  presupposes  a  wide  and  careful  natural  history, 
it  is  no  less  true  that  a  natural  history  which  is  to  serve 
as  the  basis  of  a  natural  philosophy  itself  presupposes  a 
provisional  natural  philosophy  or  theory  of  the  facts.  A 
natural  history  which  is  not  inspired  by  such  a  theoretic 
interest  in  the  facts  collected  will  prove  a  waste  of  labour, 
because  its  results  will  be  irrelevant  to  the  inquiry  in 
question.  In  Bacon's  own  language,  it  is  not  in  the 
*  mere  enumeration '  of  facts,  but  in  the  discrimination  of 
the  relevant  or  significant  from  the  irrelevant  and,  therefore, 
insignificant  facts  that  the  value  of  the  natural  history  lies. 
It  is  not  the  mere  number  of  the  facts,  but  the  selection 
of  them,  that  determines  their  scientific  value.  Bacon's 
over-confidence  in  Natural  History  is  only  an  added  proof 
of  the  inadequacy  of  his  conception  of  the  method  of 
science. 

In  two  other  notable  respects  Bacon  showed  a  defective 
understanding  of  the  scientific  work  which  was  actually 
being  done  in  his  own  time — in  his  depreciation  of  the 
mathematical  method  and  of  specialisation  in  science. 
Galileo  and  Kepler  were  applying  mathematics  to  the 
theory  of  astronomy ;  but  Bacon,  in  his  love  for  the 
experimental    method    and    his    suspicion    of   deductive 

1  Francis  Bacons  p.  400. 


BACON  47 

reasoning,  regards  such  an  application  of  mathematics  as 
a  mere  *  supplement'  to  the  true  science  of  astronomy. 
He  speaks  of  specialisation  like  that  of  Gilbert  (almost  the 
only  one  of  his  contemporaries  whom  he  mentions)  as  if 
it  implied  such  a  narrowness  of  outlook  as  disqualified 
those  who  practised  it  from  taking  a  philosophical  view  of 
things,  and  he  thinks  Gilbert  in  danger  of  '  becoming  a 
magnet.'  In  both  these  respects  the  subsequent  course 
of  scientific  discovery  has  justified  his  contemporaries,  and 
condemned  Bacon. 

The  truth  is,  as  we  have  already  seen,  that  Bacon 
belonged  as  much  to  the  Scholastic  as  to  the  modern  age. 
His  place  is  that  of  a  transition-thinker,  and  this  constitutes 
the  importance  of  his  work,  while  it  at  the  same  time  limits 
the  possibilities  of  his  achievement.  The  terms  which  he 
constantly  uses  in  speaking  of  material  phenomena  are 
specially  significant  of  this  intermediate  position.  He 
speaks  of  the  '  appetites '  and  *  desires '  of  things,  of 
*  appetites  which  aim  at  a  private  good '  and  '  appetites 
which  aim  at  a  more  public  good,'  of  *  bodies  delighting 
in  motion,'  of  *  spirits '  where  we  should  speak  of 
'forces.'  With  all  his  impatience  of  the  *  superstitions ' 
of  the  Schoolmen,  he  is  himself  too  much  of  a  Schoolman 
to  abandon  their  characteristic  modes  of  thought  and 
speech.  With  all  his  scientific  ardour,  he  is  the  author 
rather  of  an  impressive  statement,  or  series  of  statements, 
of  the  scientific  ideal  of  his  age  than  of  the  method  of 
realising  that  ideal.  The  influence  which  he  exerted  on 
the  scientific  thought  of  his  own  and  of  succeeding  ages 
was  that  rather  of  a  prophet  than  of  a  teacher ;  he  gave 
articulate  expression  to  their  own  ideal,  he  did  not  really 
direct  them  in  the  realisation  of  that  ideal.  How  great  that 
influence  was  may  be  gathered  from  the  fact  that,  as 
Fowler  says,  *the  foundation  of  the  Royal  Society  in 
England,  and  possibly  also  that  of  similar  societies  on  the 
Continent,  was  due  to  the  impulse  given  by  Bacon  to  the 
study  of  experimental  science  and  the  plans  which  he 
devised  for  its  prosecution,'^  and   that  in   the  words  of 

^  Introd.  to  Nov.  Org.,  p.  Ii6. 


48  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Lord  Morley,  *  the  French  Encyclopaedia  was  the  direct 
fruit  of  Bacon's  magnificent  conceptions.'  ^ 

Bacon's  own  interest  was  clearly  more  in  Natural 
Philosophy,  or  physical  science,  than  in  Philosophy,  as 
distinguished  from  Science — in  the  natural,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  human  sciences ;  yet  his  influence  upon 
the  actual  progress  of  the  human  or  philosophical  sciences 
has  been  undoubtedly  greater  and  more  lasting  than  his 
influence  upon  natural  science.  His  significance  for 
the  empirical  movement  of  philosophical  thought  in  his 
own  country  is  especially  remarkable.  While  the  influ- 
ence of  Descartes  is  seen  in  the  entire  movement -of 
Continental  speculation,  giving  all  the  great  thinkers  a 
prevailingly  rationalistic  tendency,  the  influence  of  Bacon 
is  no  less  clearly  visible  in  the  entire  movement  of  English 
empiricism  from  Locke  to  Spencer.  The  spirit  of  the 
movement  is  the  Baconian  spirit  of  observation  and  ex- 
periment, of  distrust  in  conceptions  and  '  innate  ideas,' 
of  a  supreme  regard  for  '  matters  of  fact,'  of  concern  for 
the  practical  as  well  as  the  theoretic  aspects  of  truth,  and 
of  comparative  unconcern  for,  if  not  agnostic  indifference 
to,  the  attainment  of  an  ultimate  metaphysical  or  theo- 
logical synthesis.  It  is  here,  rather  than  even  in  the  great 
impulse  which  he  gave  to  the  movement  of  modern 
science,  that  Bacon's  work  is  really  most  important.  It  is 
here,  even  more  definitely  than  in  the  sphere  of  physical 
science,  that  he  is  the  inaugurator  of  a  new  era  of  human 
thought,  in  which  the  break  with  Scholasticism  is  most 
.complete. 

Bacon's  interest  in  the  ultimate  questions  of  Meta- 
physics and  Theology  is  rather  to  show  that  no  answer 
to  these  questions  can  be  reached  by  the  unaided  intel- 
lect of  man,  than  to  attempt  either  a  Metaphysic  or  a 
Natural  Theology  in  the  usual  sense  of  these  terms.  The 
*key  of  his  opposition  to  Descartes,  who  gets  at  Nature 
through   God,  and   not  at  God  through  Nature,'   is,  as 

1  Diderot,  vol.  i.  p.  1 16,  quoted  by  Fowler,  p.  77. 


BACON  49 

Nichol  says,^  his  view  that  *  Nature  presents  itself  to  our 
understanding,  as  it  were,  by  a  direct  ray  of  light,  while 
God  is  revealed  to  us  only  by  a  reflected  one.'  We 
must  not,  however,  press  this  figure,  as  if  it  meant  that 
nature  is  the  image  or  reflection  of  God,  so  that  our 
knowledge  of  nature  will  be  at  the  same  time  a  know- 
ledge of  God.  'If  any  man  shall  think,  by  view  and 
inquiry  into  these  sensible  and  material  things,  to  attain 
to  any  light  for  the  revealing  of  the  nature  or  will  of 
God,  he  shall  dangerously  abuse  himself.  It  is  true  that 
the  contemplation  of  the  creatures  of  God  hath  for  end 
(as  to  the  nature  of  the  creatures  themselves)  knowledge, 
but  as  to  the  nature  of  God,  no  knowledge,  but  wonder  ; 
which  is  nothing  else  but  contemplation  broken  ofif  or 
losing  itself.' 2  Even  of  the  nature  of  man  we  can  know 
nothing.  '  The  doctrine  concerning  the  substance  of  the 
rational  soul  .  .  .  must  be  handed  over  to  religion  to  be 
determined  and  defined.  .  .  .  For  since  the  substance  of 
the  soul  in  its  creation  was  not  extracted  or  produced 
out  of  the  mass  of  heaven  and  earth,  but  was  immediately 
inspired  from  God  ;  and  since  the  laws  of  heaven  and 
earth  are  the  proper  subjects  of  philosophy ;  how  can 
we  expect  to  obtain  from  philosophy  the  knowledge  of 
the  substance  of  the  rational  soul  ?  It  must  be  drawn 
from  the  same  divine  inspiration,  from  which  that  sub- 
stance first  proceeded.'  ^ 

Bacon's  criterion  of  knowledge  being  sensible  verifica- 
tion, it  follows  that  the  reality  or  substance  of  nothing 
— human,  cosmic,  or  divine — is  knowable.  His  '  forms  ' 
are,  after  all,  material  qualities  ;  and  the  investigation  of 
these  forms  is  the  limit  of  human  knowledge.  Beyond 
the  sphere  of  knowledge,  in  all  spheres  alike,  lies  that  of 
faith.  The  very  inadequacy  of  scientific  knowledge 
demonstrates    the    necessity    of    faith.     While    Natural 

^  Bacon,  in  '  Philosophical  Classics,'  vol.  ii.  p.  128. 

*  Works,  iii.  218.  Cf.  Works,  iii.  267  :  '  The  contemplation  of  God's 
creatures  and  works  produceth  (having  regard  to  the  works  and  creatures 
themselves)  knowledge  ;  but  having  regard  to  God,  no  perfect  know- 
ledge, but  wonder,  which  is  broken  knowledge.' 

3  i)e  Aug.,  Bk.  iv.  ch.  iii.,  Works,  iv.  397,  398. 

D 


50  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

Philosophy  is  certissima  superstitionis  medicinay  it  is  at  the 
same  time  religionis fidissinia  ancilla.^'^  'It  is  an  assured 
truth  and  a  conclusion  of  experience,  that  a  little  or 
superficial  knowledge  of  philosophy  may  incline  the  mind 
of  man  to  atheism,  but  a  further  proceeding  therein 
doth  bring  the  mind  back  again  to  religion  ;  for  in  the 
entrance  of  philosophy,  when  the  second  causes,  which 
are  next  unto  the  senses,  do  offer  themselves  to  the 
mind  of  man,  if  it  dwell  and  stay  there,  it  may  induce 
some  oblivion  of  the  highest  cause  ;  but  when  a  man 
passeth  on  farther,  and  seeth  the  dependence  of  causes 
and  the  works  of  Providence ;  then,  according  to  the 
allegory  of  the  poets,  he  will  easily  believe  that  the 
highest  link  of  Nature's  chain  must  needs  be  tied  to  the 
foot  of  Jupiter's  chair.' ^  If  we  would  attain  to  that 
Divinity  or  Inspired  Theology  which  is  '  the  haven  and 
sabbath  of  all  man's  contemplations,'  we  must  *step 
out  of  the  bark  of  human  reason  and  enter  into  the  ship 
of  the  Church  ;  which  is  only  able  by  the  divine  compass 
to  rightly  direct  its  course.  Neither  will  the  stars  of 
philosophy,  which  have  hitherto  so  nobly  shone  upon  us, 
any  longer  supply  their  light ;  so  that  on  this  subject  also 
it  will  be  as  well  to  keep  silence.'^  'The  articles  and 
principles  of  religion  are  placed  and  exempted  from  ex- 
amination of  reason.'  *  '  The  "  placets  "  of  God  are  re- 
moved from  question.'  Although  Natural  and  Revealed 
Theology,  as  the  *  sciences '  of  God,  are  placed  alongside 
Physics  and  Metaphysics,  as  the  sciences  of  Nature,  the 
former  are  not  strictly  entitled,  he  holds,  to  the  name  of 
science,  'As  for  perfection  or  completeness  in  divinity, 
it  is  not  to  be  sought ;  which  makes  this  course  of  artificial 
divinity  the  more  suspect.  For  he  that  will  reduce  a 
knowledge  into  an  art,  will  make  it  round  and  uniform  ; 
but  in  divinity  many  things  must  be  left  abrupt.'  ^     The 

1  N(rv.  Org.,  Bk.  i.  Aph.  89. 

2  Advancement  of  Learning,  Bk.  i.,  Works,  iii.  267,  268. 

3  De  Aug.,  Bk.  ix.  ch.  i. 

*  Advancement  of  Learning,  Bk.  ii.,  Works,  iii.  480. 

*  Ibid.,  Works,  iii.  484. 


BACON  51 

dualism  between  faith  and  reason  is  made  as  sharp  and 
absolute  as  possible.  'The  prerogative  of  God  comprehends 
the  whole  man,  extending  to  the  reason  as  well  as  to  the 
will ;  that  man  may  deny  himself  entirely,  and  draw  near 
unto  God.  Wherefore  as  we  are  bound  to  obey  the 
divine  law  though  we  find  a  reluctation  in  our  will,  so 
are  we  to  believe  His  word,  though  we  find  a  reluctation 
in  our  reason.  For  if  we  believe  only  that  which  is 
agreeable  to  our  sense,  we  give  consent  to  the  matter 
and  not  to  the  author,  which  is  no  more  than  we  would 
do  to  a  suspected  witness.  .  .  .  The  more  discordant 
therefore  and  incredible  the  Divine  mystery  is,  the  more 
honour  is  shown  to  God  in  believing  it,  and  the  nobler  is 
the  victory  of  faith.'  ^ 

While  the  roots  of  this  dualism  and  agnosticism  are 
deep  in  his  theory  of  knowledge,  we  cannot  but  feel 
that  the  enthusiasm  with  which  Bacon  proclaims  the 
duty  of  man  to  submit  his  reason  to  the  '  placets '  of 
God,  as  interpreted  by  the  Church,  is  due  not  so  much 
to  his  concern  for  the  truths  of  religion  as  to  his  zeal 
for  the  independence  of  science.  Limited  though  its 
province  is,  yet  within  that  province  science  is  to  be  free 
from  the  bondage  of  ecclesiastical  authority.  His  doctrine 
of  the  dualism  of  faith  and  reason  is  part  of  Bacon's  general 
protest  against  the  Scholastic  confusion  of  theology  and 
philosophy.  He  is  more  interested  in  assigning  to  reason 
the  things  of  reason  than  in  assigning  to  faith  the  things 
of  faith.  That  this  is  the  true  interpretation  of  his 
position  becomes  still  more  clear  when  we  take  account 
of  his  comparatively  slight  interest  in  the  ultimate  questions 
of  philosophy,  the  intensity  of  his  interest  in  scientific 
truth,  his  hostility  to  '  superstition,'  more  especially  that 
which  he  found  in  the  Church  of  Rome,  and  his  desire 
to  limit  rather  than  extend  the  civil  power  of  the  Church. 

Bacon  is  less  concerned  for  the  independence  of  moral 
science,  and  quite  content  that  it  should  be  '  but  a  hand- 
maid to  religion,'  'admitted  into  the  train  of  theology, 

^  De  Aug.,  Bk.  ix.  ch.  i.,  Works,  v,  in,  112. 


52  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

as  a  wise  servant  and  faithful  handmaid  to  be  ready  at 
her  beck  to  minister  to  her  service  and  requirements.'^ 
The  duty  of  accepting  w^ithout  question  the  divine 
mysteries  '  holds  not  only  in  those  great  mysteries  v^'hich 
concern  the  Deity,  the  Creation,  and  the  Redemption  ; 
but  it  pertains  likewise  to  a  more  perfect  interpretation 
of  the  moral  law,'  since  '  it  must  be  confessed  that  a 
great  part  of  the  moral  law  is  higher  than  the  light  of  nature 
can  aspire  to.'  ^  It  was  left  to  Hobbes  to  complete  the 
Baconian  revolt  against  the  Scholastic  principle  of  authority, 
by  extending  it  to  the  sphere  of  ethics  as  well  as  to  that 
of  metaphysics,  and  to  attempt  for  the  first  time  to 
construct  an  independent  philosophy  alike  of  nature  and 
of  man. 

The  impression  which  Bacon  made  upon  his  contem- 
poraries is  that  which  he  still  makes  upon  ourselves,  of 
remarkable  versatility  combined  with  an  equally  remarkable 
gift  of  literary  expression — 'a  man  so  rare  in  knowledge, 
of  so  many  several  kinds,  endowed  with  the  facility  and 
felicity  of  expressing  it  all  in  so  elegant,  significant,  so 
abundant,  and  yet  so  choice  and  ravishing  a  way  of 
words,  of  metaphors,  of  allusions  as  perhaps  the  world 
hath  not  seen  since  it  was  a  world.'  ^  He  '  fulfilled 
all  numbers,'  says  Ben  Jonson,  and  *  stood  as  the  mark 
and  d.Kfii.ff  of  our  language.'  *When  we  come  to  the 
Advancement  of  Learning^  says  Church,  *  we  come  to  a 
book  which  is  one  of  the  landmarks  of  what  high  thought 
and  rich  imagination  have  made  of  the  English  language. 
It  is  the  first  book  in  English  prose  of  secular  interest ; 
the  first  book  which  can  claim  a  place  beside  the  Lawi 
of  Ecclesiastical  Polity.''^  The  literary  side  of  Bacon's 
achievement  is  the  more  remarkable  when  we  remember, 
on  the  one  hand,  his  own  lack  of  faith  in  the  future  of 
the  language  of  Chaucer  and  Spenser  and  Shakespeare, 
and,  on  the  other,  his  strict  subordination  of  the  form  to 
the  matter  of  his  writing.     *  These  modern  languages,' 

^  Works,  V.  20.         *  Works,  v.  112,  113.  »  Sir  Toby  Matthew 

*  Bacon,  in  '  English  Men  of  Letters,'  p.  217. 


BACON  53 

he  writes  to  Sir  Toby  Matthew,  <  will  at  one  time  or 
another  play  the  bank-rowte  with  books,  and  since  I 
have  lost  much  time  with  this  age,  I  would  be  glad  to 
recover  it  with  posterity.'  In  this  conviction  he  either 
wrote  all  his  greater  works  in  Latin  or  afterwards  trans- 
lated them  into  that  language.  Of  the  Advancement  of 
Learning  alone  he  says :  *  It  is  a  book  that  will  live, 
and  be  a  citizen  of  the  world,  as  English  books  are  not.' 
On  the  other  hand,  he  seems  to  have  felt  profoundly  the 
new  danger  which  beset  the  learning  of  his  time  from  the 
tendency  to  set  choiceness  of  phrase  above  exactness  of 
thought  and  expression,  '  that  first  distemper  of  learning, 
when  men  study  words  and  not  matter,'  and  think  rather 
of  *  the  choiceness  of  the  phrase  .  .  .  and  the  sweet  fall- 
ing of  the  clauses,'  than  of  the  sense.  This  new  verbalism 
of  the  Renaissance  writers  was,  in  his  eyes,  no  less  fatal 
than  the  older  verbalism  of  the  Schoolmen  ;  and  he  speaks 
of  himself,  on  the  contrary,  'as  being  one  that  accounted 
words  to  be  subservient  or  ministerial  to  matter.'  Yet 
he  himself,  it  has  been  truly  said,  writes  'the  finest 
English  of  the  days  when  its  tones  were  finest ' ;  his 
prose  is  the  prose  of  'a  man  who  had  in  himself  all  of 
the  poet  save  the  poet's  heart ';  his  is  *  a  fancy  among 
the  masters  of  prose  equalled  by  Plato  alone.' 

The  literary  form,  which  Bacon  especially  favours,  lends 
itself  to  striking  and  picturesque  expression.  It  is  the 
Aphorism,  which  he  prefers  to '  methodical  delivery '  chiefly 
because  it  answers  to  the  incompleteness  of  knowledge  as  he 
conceives  it,  but  also  from  the  unerring  instinct  of  the 
literary  artist  that  it  is  best  calculated  to  arouse  attention 
and  create  interest  in  what  he  has  to  say.  '  Aphorisms, 
representing  a  knowledge  broken,  do  invite  to  enquire 
farther.'^  Of  this  species  of  writing  the  great  example  is 
the  Essays,  or,  as  he  describes  them,  'dispersed  medita- 
tions,' which,  'of  all  my  other  works,  have  been  most 
current ;  for  that,  as  it  seems,  they  come  home  to  men's 
businesse  and  bosomes.'  Of  the  third  edition  he  says 
that  *  the  Latin  volume  of  them  (being  in  the  universal 

1  Works,  iii.  405. 


54  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

language)  may  last  as  long  as  books  last.'  Though  they 
do  not  belong  to  Philosophy  in  the  technical  sense,  they 
contain  many  philosophical  reflections,  as  their  Latin  title 
indicates,  *  Faithful  Discourses,  or  the  Inwards  of  Things.' 
They  are  the  ripe  fruit  of  Bacon's  observation  of  men, 
and  of  his  own  varied  experience ;  and,  as  Spedding  remarks, 
he  was  '  deeper  read  in  the  phenomena  of  the  human 
breast  than  in  those  of  the  material  world.'  ^  The  style 
of  this  famous  work  is  apt  at  first  to  disappoint  the  modern 
reader.  The  essays  read  more  like  notes  or  memoranda 
on  their  subjects  than  like  finished  discourses.  *  Nothing,' 
says  Church,  *  can  be  more  loose  than  the  structure  of  the 
essays.  There  is  no  art,  no  style,  almost,  except  in  the 
political  ones,  no  order ;  thoughts  are  put  down  and  left 
unsupported,  unproved,  undeveloped.'^  They  are  Mike 
chapters  in  Aristotle's  Ethics  and  Rhetoric  on  virtues  and 
characters.'  Yet  they  are  full  of  memorable  sayings 
which  have  become  current  coin  in  the  world  of  later 
culture.  The  very  brevity  of  the  statement  and  the 
sharpness  of  antithesis — the  absence  of  elaboration — lend 
a  piquancy  to  observations  which  in  themselves  are 
neither  strikingly  profound  nor  original.  At  every  turn 
we  are  surprised  by  some  happy  analogy,  some  quaint 
illustration,  some  illuminating  allusion,  which  springs 
from  Bacon's  *  incorrigible  imaginativeness,'  from  the 
rare  wealth  of  a  fancy  and  wit  that  are  classical  rather 
than  modern  in  their  peculiar  quality. 

The  ethical  content  of  the  Essays  is  apt  to  disappoint 
us  no  less  than  their  style.  They  consist  mainly  of 
maxims  for  the  conduct  of  life  ;  but  these  maxims  are, 
for  the  most  part,  rules  by  obeying  which  a  man  may 
become  the  'architect  of  his  fortune'  or  secure  his 
advancement  in  life,  they  inculcate  a  prudential  rather 
than  an  ideal  morality.  As  Bacon  puts  it  in  another 
place, ^  'We  must  strive  with  all  possible  endeavour  to 
render  the  mind  obedient  to  occasions  and  opportunities, 

^  Pref.  to  New  Atlantis,  Works,  iii.  122. 

'  Bacon,  in  '  English  Men  of  Letters,'  p.  215. 

•  De  Aug.,  Bk.  viii.  ch.  ii.,  Works,  v.  70,  71. 


BACON  55 

and  to  be  noways  obstinate  and  refractory  towards  them. 
Nothing  is  more  politic  than  to  make  the  wheels  of  the 
mind  concentric  and  voluble  with  the  wheels  of  fortune.' 
The  great  occasions  and  opportunities  are  those  offered 
by  the  characters  and  actions  of  our  fellow-men  ;  and 
human  nature,  like  nature  itself,  is  not  conquered  except 
by  obedience.  We  must  therefore  study  and  watch  our 
fellows,  with  the  patience  and  perseverance  of  the  Natural 
Philosopher,  and  with  the  same  end  in  view,  that  of 
obtaining  power  and  advantage,  in  the  one  case  as  in  the 
other.  The  result  is  a  Machiavellian  policy  :  '  what 
Machiavelli  meant  for  princes  Bacon  transfers  to  indi- 
viduals.' In  the  higher  teaching  of  the  ethical  books  of 
the  De  Augmentis^  however.  Bacon  insists  that  we  must 
not  make  use  of  'evil  arts.'  'Men  ought  to  be  so  far 
removed  from  devoting  themselves  to  wicked  arts  of  this 
nature,  that  rather  .  .  .  they  ought  to  set  before  their  eyes 
not  only  that  general  map  of  the  world,  "that  all  things 
are  vanity  and  vexation  of  spirit,"  but  also  that  more 
particular  chart,  namely,  "that  being  without  well-being 
is  a  curse,  and  the  greater  being  the  greater  curse,"  and 
"that  all  virtue  is  most  rewarded,  and  all  wickedness 
most  punished  in  itself.'"^  The  entire  tone  and  spirit 
of  the  teaching  of  this  work  is  on  a  different  level  from 
that  of  the  Essays^  and  it  must  be  remembered  that  in  it, 
and  not  in  the  Essays^  we  have  Bacon's  complete  state- 
ment of  his  ethical  views,  '  Men  ought  so  to  procure 
serenity,  as  they  destroy  not  magnanimity.'^  'Seek  ye 
first  the  good  things  of  the  mind,  and  the  rest  will  either 
be  supplied,  or  their  loss  will  not  be  felt.'  *  We  hear 
again  this  higher  note,  which  is  not  unheard  in  the  Essays 
themselves,  in  the  beautiful  fragment  of  the  New  Atlantis^ 
written  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  in  which  he  describes 
in  language  of  tender  admiration  the  life  and  manners  of 
the  distant  city  of  his  dreams,  where  they  are  '  in  God's 
bosom,  a  land  unknown.' 

^  Bk.  viii.  ch.  ii.,  Works,  v.  76. 
"  Bk,  vii.  ch.  ii.,  Works,  v.  14. 
^  Bk.  viii,  ch,  ii.,  Works,  v.  78. 


CHAPTER   II 

HOBBES:   MATERIALISM   AND   POLITICAL 
PHILOSOPHY 

While  Hobbes  may  be  regarded,  from  some  points  of 
view,  as  the  successor  of  Bacon,  he  is,  no  less  than  Bacon 
himself,  an  independent  and  original  thinker.  His  works 
bear  no  traces  of  Bacon's  influence,  and  in  fundamental 
points  of  philosophical  theory  he  is  directly  opposed  to  the 
teaching  of  Bacon.  The  statement  of  the  chief  points  of 
agreement  and  difference  will  bring  us  at  once  to  the 
characteristic  features  of  Hobbes's  philosophy. 

In   the  first   place,  Hobbes  is  in  full  agreement  with 
I  Bacon    as   to   the    practical    value   of  knowledge ;    it    is 
I  indeed  to  him,  rather  than  to  Bacon,  that  we  owe  the 
, .  j  Jictum  that  ^knowledge  is  power.''.   *The  end  of  know- 
ledge is  power ;  and  the  use  of  theorems  (which,  among 
geometricians,  serve  for  the  finding  out  of  properties)  is 
for  the  construction  of  problems ;  and,  lastly,  the  scope  of 
all  speculation  is.  the  performance  of  some  action,  or  thing 

/to  be  done.'  ^  This  practical  or  utilitarian  interest  in 
knowledge  is  the  dominating  motive  of  Hobbes's  whole 
enterprise  in  philosophy.  That  enterprise  embraces  the 
entire  field  of  human  knowledge,  so  that  he  might  well 
have  said,  with  Bacon,  that  he  had  taken  all  knowledge  for 
his  province.  But  the  end  to  which  all  else  is  a  means  is 
that  scientific  understanding  of  the  ethical  and  political  life 
of  man  in  which  Bacon  too  had  seen  the  culmination  of 
his  scientific  ambition,  and  the  practical  value  of  which 
seems  to  Hobbes   least  open   to   question.      While   the 

^  1  Works,  i.  7. 

S6 


HOBBES  57 

utility  of  natural  philosophy  and  geometry  is  measured  by 
the  arts  which  they  make  possible  and  the  benefits  which 
come  to  men  through  their  possession,  '  the  utility  of 
moral  and  civil  philosophy  is  to  be  estimated,  not  so  much 
by  the  commodities  we  have  by  knowing  these  sciences, 
as  by  the  calamities  we  receive  from  not  knowing  them.' 
The  greatest  of  calamities,  or  rather  the  cause  of  all  avoid- 
able calamity,  is  war,  and  the  cause  of  war  is  not  perversity 
of  will,  but  intellectual  blindness,  ignorance  of  the  rules  of 
civil  life,  or  of  '  those  duties  which  unite  and  keep  men 
in  peace.'  ^ 

Hobbes  is,  like  Bacon,  a  herald  of  the  new  era,  he  is 
filled  with  the  new  spirit  qf_Naturalism.  For  him,  as  for 
Bacon,  the  theological  and  supernatural  world  of  the 
Scholastic  philosophy  has  lost  interest ;  nature  and  man, 
rather  than  God,  are  the  objects  of  his  inquiry.  With 
regard  to  the  knowledge  of  God  he  is  as  frankly  agnostic 
as  his  predecessor.  '  Curiosity,  or  love  of  the  knowledge 
of  causes,  draws  a  man  from  the  consideration  of  the 
effect,  to  seek  the  cause  ;  and  again,  the  cause  of  that 
cause  ;  till  of  necessity  he  must  come  to  this  thought  at 
last,  that  there  is  some  cause,  whereof  there  is  no  former 
cause,  but  i*  eternal ;  which  is  it  men  call  God.  So  that 
it  is  impossible  to  make  any  profound  inquiry  into  natural 
causes,  without  being  inclined  thereby  to  believe  there  is 
one  God  eternal ;  though  they  cannot  have  any  idea  of 
him  in  their  minds,  answerable  to  his  nature.  For  as  a 
man  that  is  born  blind,  hearing  men  talk  of  warming 
themselves  by  the  fire,  and  being  brought  to  warm  him- 
self by  the  same,  may  easily  conceive,  and  assure  himself, 
there  is  somewhat  there,  which  men  call  fire^  and  is  the 
cause  of  the  heat  he  feels ;  but  cannot  imagine  what  it  is 
like  ;  nor  have  an  idea  of  it  in  his  mind,  such  as  they  have 
that  see  it ;  so  also  by  the  visible  things  in  this  world,  and 
their  admirable  order,  a  man  may  conceive  there  is  a  cause 
of  them,  which  men  call  God  ;  and  yet  not  hav^  an  idea, 
or  image  of  him  in  his  mind.'  ^ 

^  Works,  i.  8.  *  Leviathan,  pt.  i.  ch.  xi. 


58  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Here,  however,  Hobbes's  quarrel  with  Scholasticism 
ends ;  it  concerns  the  subject-matter,  not  the  method,  of 
that  philosophy.  He  does  not  join  in  Bacon's  protest 
against  the  Scholastic  habit  of  anticipating  nature,  of 
deducing  facts  from  theories ;  he  has  no  thought  of  sub- 
stituting a  scientific  induction  for  the  deductive  ration- 
alism of  Scholastic  philosophy.  So  far  as  the  question  of 
method  is  concerned,  he  is  the  opponent  rather  of  Bacon 
than  of  the  Schoolmen  ;  for  him  science,  as  such,  is 
rationalistic  or  deductive,  not  empirical  and  inductive. 
Rational  insight,  not  ^empirical  knowledge,  is  his  scientific 
ideal.  That  '  histqry '  of  which  Bacon  had  made  so 
much,  he  excludes  from  philosophy  properly  so  called, 
*  because  such  knowledge  is  but  experience,  or  authority, 
and  not  ratiocination.'  ^  On  the  other  hand,  Hobbes  sees 
in  the  method  of  geometry  which  Bacon  has  so  inade- 
quately appreciated  the  characteristic  method  of  all  truly 
scientific  knowledge ;  and  it  is,  therefore,  in  his,  rather 
than  in  Bacon's,  account  of  the  method  of  science  that  we 
find  the  formulation  of  the  actual  procedure  of  modern 
science.  In  this  faith  in  the  method  of  mathematical 
demonstration  Hobbes  also  reflects,  far  more  truly  than 
Bacon,  the  spirit  of  the  century  to  which  both  belong, 
that  spirit  of  which  the  Ethica  of  Spinoza,  more  geometrtco 
demonstrata^  is  the  most  important  philosophical  product. 
In  that  *  experience'  in  which  Bacon  had  seen  the 
fountain  of  all  knowledge  he  sees  no  true  source  of  know- 
ledge at  all.  *  Experience  concludeth  nothing  univer- 
sally.'^  *They  that  study  natural  philosophy  study  in 
vain,  except  they  begin  at  geometry.'  ^ 

Hobbes  accordingly  defines  Philosophy  as  'such  know- 
ledge of  effects  or  appearances  as  we  acquire  by  true 
ratiocination  from  the  knowledge  we  have  first  of  their 
causes  or  generation  ;  and  again,  of  such  causes  or  genera- 
tions as  may  be  from  knowing  first  their  effects.'  *  He 
distinguishes,   therefore,   two   forms   of  ratiocination   or 

^  Works,  i.  ID,  II.  '  Works,  iv.  i8. 

=»  Works,  i.  73.  *  Works,  i.  3. 


HOBBES  59 

computation.  *To  compute,  is  either  to  collect  the  sum 
of  many  things  that  are  added  together,  or  to  know  what 
remains  when  one  thing  is  taken  out  of  another.  Ratio- 
cination, therefore,  is  the  same  with  addition  and  sub- 
traction.'^ These  two  methods  are  called  by  him  the 
synthetical  and  the  analytical,  and  correspond  to  the 
deductive  and  the  inductive  method  respectively.  The 
superiority  of  the  deductive  or  synthetic  to  the  inductive 
or  analytic  method  follows  from  the  nature  of  demon- 
stration, as  resting  upon  first  principles  embodied  in 
definitions.  While  the  particulars  of  sense  are  first  for 
us,  the  universals  are  first  in  nature,  and  it  is  in  the 
knowledge  of  these  universals  that  all  knowledge  of  causes 
must  ultimately  rest.^ 

A  definition  is  explained  by  Hobbes  to  be  the  statement  , 
of  the  meaning  of  a  name  or  term.  A  name  is  '  a  word"^ 
taken  at  pleasure  to  serve  for  a  mark,  which  may  raise  in 
our  mind  a  thought  like  to  some  thought  we  had  before, 
and  which  being  pronounced  to  others,  may  be  to  them 
a  sign  of  what  thought  the  speaker  had,  or  had  not 
before  in  his  mind.'  ^  From  the  stress  which  Hobbes 
lays  upon  the  importance  of  language,  primarily  for  our- 
selves, as  securing  permanence  for  the  results  of  previous 
thought  and,  therefore,  economy  in  the  actual  process  of 
thinking,  and  more  especially  from  the  stress  he  lays  upon 
the  arbitrariness  of  language,  it  has  been  inferred  that  he 
denies,  implicitly  at  least,  the  objective  validity  of  scientific 
explanation,  and  reduces  all  philosophy  to  mere  verbalism. 
But  the  arbitrariness  of  words  or  names  does  not  imply 
the  arbitrariness  or  subjectivity  of  the  system  of  proposi- 
tions of  which  they  are  the  elements.  The  mark  or  sign, 
once  chosen,  is  the  symbol  of  the  thing  or  of  its  qualities  ; 
and  while,  as  Hobbes  insists,  initial  agreement  as  to  the 
use  of  such  names  is  the  condition  of  intellectual  inter- 
course, the  common  use  of  the  accepted  symbols  does 
not  preclude  those  who  use  them  from  the  apprehension 
of  real  relations,  or  of  things  as  they  are  in  themselves. 

1  Loc.  cit.  »  Cf.  Works,  i.  70,  8l.  »  Works,  i.  16. 


6o  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

While  he  emphasises  the  necessity  of  sensation  as  providing 
the  mind  with  the  materials  of  knowledge,  he  is  equally 
clear  that  knowledge  itself  is  impossible  without  the 
constructive  activity  of  the  knowing  mind.  'Reason  is 
not,  as  sense  and  memory,  born  with  us  ;  nor  gotten  by 
experience  only,  as  prudence  is  ;  but  attained  by  industry. 
.  .  .  And  whereas  sense  and  memory  are  but  knowledge 
of  fact,  which  is  a  thing  past  and  irrevocable  ;  science  is  the 
knowledge  of  consequences,  and  dependence  of  one  fact 
upon  another.'  ^ 

A  further  proof  of  the  extreme  view  attributed  to  Hobbes 
as  to  the  part  played  by  words  in  our  so-called  knowledge 
is  sometimes  found  in  what  Professor  Taylor  has  called  his 

*  ultra-nominalist  position  in  logic'  There  is  no  founda- 
tion, however,  for  such  an  interpretation  of  his  position. 
We  find  no  denial,  explicit  or  implicit,  of  the  reality  of 
the  common  element  which  entitles  the  several  individuals 
to  be  called  by  the  same  name ;  on  the  contrary,  this 
community  of  nature  is  implied  in  what  he  says  as  to  the 
applicability  of  the  name,  and  especially  in  his  account  of 
the  office  of  the  copula  in  the  proposition.     The  copula 

*  makes  us  think  of  the  cause  for  which  those  names  were 
imposed  on  that  thing.  As,  for  example,  when  we  say  a 
body  is  movable,  though  we  conceive  the  same  thing  to  be 
designed  by  both  these  names,  yet  our  mind  rests  not  there, 
but  searches  farther  what  it  is  to  be  a  body,  or  to  be 
movable,  that  is,  wherein  consists  the  difference  between 
these  and  other  things,  for  which  these  are  so  called,  others 
not  so  called.  They,  therefore,  that  seek  what  it  is  to  be 
anything,  as  to  be  movable,  to  be  hot,  etc.,  seek  in  things 
the  causes  of  their  names.'  ^ 

-I—  It  may  appear  a  more  fundamental  objection  to  Hobbes's 
account  of  the  first  principles  of  human  knowledge  that 
definition,  or  the  clear  formulation  of  the  ultimate  principles 
alike  of  knowledge  and  of  reality,  is  rather  the  goal  than 
the  starting-point  of  scientific  inquiry.  But  what  Hobbes 
is  really  describing  is  not  so  much  the  actual  starting-point 

^  Lev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  v.  •  Works,  i.  31. 


HOBBES  6 1 

of  the  inquiry  as  the  starting-point  of  a  complete  explana- 
tion, the  ideal  rather  than  the  actual  point  of  departure. 
If  we  are  really  to  demonstrate  anything,  to  know  or 
understand  it  as  the  mathematician  understands  and  demon- 
strates, the  whole  process  of  proof  must  be,  as  in  geometry, 
a  strict  concatenation  of  the  consequences  which  follow 
from  certain  initial  conceptions.  The  analytic  or  inductive 
method  must  be  superseded  by  the  synthetic  or  deductive, 
and  the  latter  method  implies  the  apprehension  of  first 
principles,  or  ultimate  causal  points  of  view,  from  which 
we  can  see  the  entire  chain  of  effects  generated  as  a 
necessary  result.  Is  not  such  a  transfiguration  of  ordinary 
sense-experience,  such  a  mathematical  interpretation  of 
reality,  a  truer  account  of  the  ideal  which  inspires  the 
activity  of  modern  science  than  the  inductive  investigation 
of  the  facts  with  which  Bacon  had  identified  it  ? 

Yet  all  knowledge,  according  to  Hobbes,  begins  in  sensa-  ^, 
tion.  A  'thought'  is  but  'a  representation  or  appear- 
ance, of  some  quality,  or  other  accident  of  a  body  without 
us,  which  is  commonly  called  an  object.  Which  object 
worketh  on  the  eyes,  ears,  and  other  parts  of  a  man's 
body  ;  and  by  diversity  of  working,  produceth  diversity  of 
appearances.  The  original  of  them  all,  is  that  which  we 
call  sense,  for  there  is  no  conception  in  a  man's  mind, 
which  hath  not  at  first,  totally,  or  by  parts,  been  begotten 
upon  the  organs  of  sense.  The  rest  are  derived  from  that 
original.' ■'•  It  must  be  noted,  however,  that  in  the 
knowledge  which  we  derive  from  sense,  Hobbes  includes 
the  judgment  by  which  we  compare  and  distinguish 
sense-appearances.  '  Sense,  therefore,  properly  so  called, 
must  necessarily  have  in  it  a  perpetual  variety  of  phantasms, 
that  they  may  be  discerned  one  from  another  ...  it  being 
almost  all  one  for  a  man  to  be  always  sensible  of  one  and 
the  same  thing,  and  not  to  be  sensible  at  all  of  any 
thing.'  2 

The  immediate  objects  of  the  senses  are,  Hobbes  finds, 
mere  *  phantasms '  or  *  appearances  ' — as  we  should  say, 

^  Lev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  L  '  Works,  i.  393-4« 


62  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

states  of  consciousness,  having  no  existence  outside  the 
mind  itself.  *  Light  and  colour,  and  heat  and  sound,  and 
other  qualities  which  are  commonly  called  sensible,  are 
not  objects,  but  phantasms  in  the  sentients.'  ^  It  follows 
that  the  object  of  sense-perception  is  purely  subjective, 
and  totally  unlike  the  real  object,  which  is  the  cause  of 
the  sense-appearance.  This  real  object,  or  cause  of  the 
sense-appearance,  is  in  every  case  motion.  All  sensible 
qualities  are,  *  in  the  object,  that  causeth  them,  but  so 
many  several  motions  of  the  matter,  by  which  it  presseth 
our  organs  diversely.  Neither  in  us  that  are  pressed, 
are  they  anything  else  but  divers  motions ;  for  motion 
produceth  nothing  but  motion.' ^  Hobbes's  theory  of 
knowledge,  or  *  logic,'  as  he  calls  it,  thus  results  in  the 
acceptance  of  motion,  or  matter  in  motion,  as  the  sole 
reality ;  and  this  becomes  the  fundamental  principle  of 
his  philosophy,  which,  so  far  as  it  conforms  to  his  own 
ideal  of  synthetic  or  strictly  ratiocinative  explanation,  is 
simply  the  result  of  the  application  of  the  principles  of 
the  new  science  of  the  time,  the  science  of  Kepler  and 
Galileo  and  Harvey,  to  the  whole  of  reality.  Philo- 
sophy or  metaphysics  is  only  physical  science  universalised. 
The  only  real  causes  are  mechanical ;  formal  and  final 
causes  are  fictions  of  the  Scholastic  imagination.  We 
see  the  same  influence  of  the  current  scientific  concep- 
tions and  methods  in  the  great  Continental  philosophies 
of  the  period,  those  of  Descartes  and  Spinoza.  The 
difference  in  the  case  of  Hobbes  is  that  the  mechanical 
and  materialistic  point  of  view  excludes  the  opposite,  that 
of  mind  or  spirit ;  for  him  mind  is  matter,  thought  is 
motion.  Any  other  interpretation  of  reality  or  cause  is 
for  him  simply  inconceivable,  because  it  is  not  scientific. 
*The  causes  of  universal  things  (of  those,  at  least,  that 
have  any  cause)  are  manifest  of  themselves,  or  (as  they 
say  commonly)  known  to  nature  ;  so  that  they  need  no 
method  at  all ;  for  they  have  all  but  one  universal  cause, 
which  is  motion.  .  .  .  For  though  many  cannot  under- 

*  Works,  i.  391,  392.  •  Lev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  i. 


HOBBES  63 

stand  till  it  be  in  some  sort  demonstrated  to  them,  that  all 
mutation  consists  in  motion  ;  yet  this  happens  not  from 
any  obscurity  in  the  thing  itself  (for  it  is  not  intelligible 
that  anything  can  depart  either  from  rest,  or  from  the 
motion  it  has,  except  by  motion),  but  either  by  having 
their  natural  discourse  corrupted  with  former  opinions 
received  from  their  masters,  or  else  for  this,  that  they 
do  not  at  all  bend  their  mind  to  the  enquiring  out 
of  truth.'  ^ 

All  reality  being  conceived  as  material,  Hobbes's  scheme 
of  philosophy  falls  into  tvv^o  main  branches.  Natural  and 
Civil  Philosophy,  dealing  respectively  w^ith  natural  and 
civil  or  artificial  bodies.  Civil  Philosophy,  again,  consists 
of  two  partSj'^  Ethics  and  Politics,  the  first  dealing  with 
man  as  the  material  of  the  State,  the  second  with  the 
State  itself.  Nature  or  Body  as  such,  Man — the  most 
important  of  bodies,  especially  as  the  nucleus  of  the  State, 
— and  the  Citizen :  these  are  the  three  great  topics 
embraced  in  the  universal  scheme  ;  and  Hobbes's  plan 
was  to  treat  them  in  three  successive  works,  De  Corpore^ 
De  Homine,  and  De  Give.  The  exigencies  of  the  political 
situation,  however,  as  well  as  his  own  really  predominating 
interest  in  the  ethical  and  political  parts  of  the  inquiry, 
precipitated  the  writing  and  publication  of  the  second  and 
third  parts  before  the  completion  of  the  first  and  funda- 
mental division  of  his  philosophy.  It  was  not  till  1655 
that  the  De  Corpore  was  published,  while  the  De  Give 
was  privately  printed  in  1642,  as  Elementorum  Philosophiae 
Sectio  Tert'ia  ;  the  Human  Nature^  published  in  1650,  had 
already  been  written  in  1640,  along  with  the  De  Gorpore 
Politico^  and  entitled  The  Elements  of  Law^  Natural  and 
Politique ;  and  The  Leviathan  ;  or  the  Matter,  Form,  and 
Power  of  a  Gommonwealthy  Ecclesiastical  and  Givil,  appeared 
in  165 1.  The  De  Homine,  published  in  1 65 8,  is  the 
nominal  completion  of  the  scheme,  but  is  really  superfluous 
after  the  Human  Nature^  and  is  devoted  rather  to  Physics 
than  to  Psychology. 

^  Works,  i.  69,  70. 


64  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

It  is  not  a  mere  accident  of  the  order  in  which  the 
works  were  composed  that  the  psychological  and  ethico- 
political  treatises  contain  rather  an  independent  and  em- 
pirical account  of  the  nature  of  man  and  the  State  than 
a  deduction  of  the  consequences  of  Hobbes's  general 
philosophical  principles  when  applied  to  the  problems  of 
psychology,  ethics,  and  politics.  Even  in  the  De  Corpore 
itself  he  finds  it  necessary,  when  he  reaches,  in  Part  iv., 
the  subject  of  *  Physics,  or  the  Phenomena  of  Nature,* 
to  abandon  the  synthetic  or  deductive  method  which  he 
had  employed,  more  or  less  consistently,  in  the  preceding 
parts.  For  the  'knowledge  of  effects  acquired  by  true 
ratiocination '  he  now  substitutes  the  method  of  '  finding 
out  by  the  appearances  or  effects  of  nature  which  we 
know  by  sense,  some  ways  and  means  by  which  they  may 
be,  I  do  not  say  they  are,  generated.'^  It  is  still  more 
obvious  that,  in  the  case  of  psychology  and  ethics,  the 
immediate  bases  of  civil  or  political  philosophy,  we  must 
exchange  the  synthetic  for  the  analytic  method,  and 
Hobbes  is  no  less  explicit  in  his  admissions  here.  *  The 
causes  of  the  motions  of  the  mind  are  known,  not 
only  by  ratiocination,  but  also  by  the  experience  of 
every  man  that  takes  the  pains  to  observe  those  motions 
within  himself.'  It  follows  that  even  those  who  '  have 
not  learned  the  first  part  of  philosophy,  namely,  geometry 
and  physics,  may,  notwithstanding,  attain  the  principles  of 
civil  philosophy,  by  the  analytical  method.'  ^ 

Hobbes's  psychology   is  limited   in   its  scope  and,  we 

feel,  to  some  extent  biassed  in  its  results,  by  the  interest 

I  in    which    it    is   undertaken,    namely,    *the   finding   out 

the  first  and  most  simple  elements  wherein  the  composi- 

Itions  of  politic  rules  and  laws  are  lastly  resolved.'^     Its 

lain  object  is  to  establish  the  opposite  view  of  human 
lature,  and  of  the  motives  which  guide  its  activities,  to 

lat  which  Aristotle  had  held  and  Grotius  had  recently 
restated  in  his  De  Jure  Belli  et  Pacts.  According  to  the 
latter  view,  man  is  naturally  a  social  and  political  being, 

*  Works,  i.  873.  Works,  i.  73.  '  Human  Nature^  ch.  xiii. 


HOBBES  6  s 

recognising  the  claims  of  others  upon  him  and  finding  his 
own  good  in  that  of  the  community.  Against  this  view 
Hobbes  contends  that  man  is  by  nature  a  mere  individual, 
concerned  only  with  his  own  good,  which  he  is  ready  to 
defend  against  the  competing  claims  of  all  other  individuals. 
At  the  same  time  there  is  a  great  deal  of  sound  psycho- 
logical observation,  especially  in  the  Human  Nature,  which 
has  little,  if,any,  bearing  upon  this  underlying  polemical 
motive.  The  fundamental  characteristic,  alike  of  Nature 
and  of  rnan,  Hobbes  finds  to  be  '  Endeavour,'  or  the 
tendency  of  a  being  to  persist  in  its  present  condition, 
either  of  rest  or  of  motion.  Conscious  endeavour  is  either 
appetite  for  that  which  helps,  or  aversion  from  that  which 
hinders,  *the  vital  motion.'  The  objects  which  help 
vitality  are  called  pleasant,  those  which  hinder  it,  painful. 
While  some  appetites  and  aversions  are  congenital,  all 
those  whose  objects  are  '  particular  things '  are  the  pro- 
duct of  experience.  In  both  cases  good  and  evil  are 
simply  general  names  for  the  objects  of  desire  and  aversion 
respectively.  '  Every  man,  for  his  own  part,  calleth  that 
which  pleaseth,  and  is  delightful  to  himself,  good  ;  and 
that  evil  which  displeaseth  him  :  insomuch  that  while 
every  man  difFereth  from  another  in  constitution,  they 
differ  also  from  one  another  concerning  the  common 
distinction  of  good  and  evil.'  ^  There  is  '  nothing  simply 
and  absolutely  so  ;  nor  any  common  rule  of  good  and 
evil,  to  be  taken  from  the  nature  of  the  objects  them- 
selves.' ^ 

The  actions  of  man  are  always  in  the  line  of  his  own 
apparent  good,  or  determined  by  the  prevailing  appetite  or 
desire.  In  an  act  of  will  Hobbes  recognises  a  further 
important  element,  that  of  deliberation,  or  the  'alternate 
succession  of  appetite  and  fear  during  all  the  time  the 
action  is  in  our  power  to  do  or  not  to  do.'  But  will 
itself  is  only  *the  last  appetite  in  deliberating.' ^  It 
follows,  not  only  that  will  is  not  specifically  different  from 
animal  appetite,  but  that  no  act  of  will  is  free  in  the  sense 

^  Human  Nature,  ch.  vii.  *  Lev.,  ch.  vi.  *  Lrj.,  ch.  vi. 

£ 


66  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

of  not  being  determined  by  necessary  causes,  or  in  any 
sense  in  which  the  animal  is  not  equally  free.X 

The  extremes  to  which  Hobbes  is  prepared  to  carry 
his  view  of  the  utter  selfishness  of  human  nature  are  illus- 
trated in  his  account  of  the  passions.  We  may  take  as 
examples  the  cases  of  pity,  laughter,  and  charity.  '  Pity 
is  imagination  or  fiction  of  future  calamity  to  ourselves, 
proceeding  from  the  sense  of  another   man's  calamity.* 

*  The  passion  of  laughter '  is  *  nothing  else  but  sudden 
glory  arising  from  some  sudden  conception  of  some  emi- 
nence in  ourselves,  by  comparison  with  the  infirmity  of 
others,  or  with  our  own  formerly.'  2  Even  charity,  love, 
or  goodwill  is  ruthlessly  traced  to  the  same  selfish  source. 

*  There  can  be  no  greater  argument  to  a  man,  of  his  own 
power,  than  to  find  himself  able  not  only  to  accomplish 
his  own  desires,  but  also  to  assist  other  men  in  theirs  : 
and  this  is  that  conception  wherein  consisteth  charity.' 3 

His  own  happiness,  then,  is  the  one  object  of  each 
man's  pursuit.  But  since  'the  felicity  of  this  life  con- 
sisteth not  in  the  repose  of  a  mind  satisfied,'  but  is  'a 
continual  progress  of  the  desire  from  one  object  to  another, 
the  attaining  of  the  former  being  still  but  the  way  to  the 
latter,'  it  follows  that  the  value  which  man  cannot  but 
put  upon  the  continuance  of  his  happiness,  that  is,  of  the 
opportunity  of  satisfying  his  ever  new  desires  in  the  future, 
leads  to  a  further  '  general  inclination  of  all  mankind,  a 
perpetual  and  restless  desire  of  power  after  power,  that 
ceaseth  only  in  death.'  The  chief  cause  of  this  restless- 
ness is  the  insecurity  of  our  happiness  without  increase  of 
our  powers  or  opportunities  of  future  satisfaction.  And 
since  riches,  honour,  and  other  forms  of  power  are  subjects 
of  competition,  the  result  is  *  contention,  enmity,  and  war  ; 
because  the  way  of  one  competitor  to  the  attaining  of  his 
desire  is  to  kill,  subdue,  supplant,  or  repel  the  other.'  * 
*So  that  in  the  nature  of  man,  we  find  three  principal 
causes  of  quarrel.  First,  competition ;  secondly,  difllidence  ; 
thirdly,  glory.     The  first  maketh  men  invade  for  gain  ; 

^  Cf.  Works,  i.  409.  *  Human  Nature,  ch.  ix. ;  cf.  Lev.,  ch.  vi, 

*  Human  Nature,  ch.  ix.  *  Lev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  xi. 


HOBBES  67 

the  second,  for  safety ;  the  third,  for  reputation.  .  .  . 
Hereby  it  is  manifest,  that  during  the  time  men  live 
without  a  common  power  to  keep  them  all  in  awe,  they 
are  in  that  condition  which  is  called  war  ;  and  such  a  war, 
as  is  of  every  man,  against  every  man.  For  war  consisteth 
not  in  battle  only,  or  the  act  of  fighting  ;  but  in  a  tract  of 
time,  wherein  the  will  to  contend  by  battle  is  sufficiently 
known.  .  .  .  For  as  the  nature  of  foul  weather  lieth  not 
in  a  shower  or  two  of  rain  ;  but  in  an  inclination  thereto 
of  many  days  together  :  so  the  nature_of  war  consisteth 
not  in  actual  fighting,  but  in  the  known  disposition  thereto^ 
"during  all  the  time  there  is  no  assurance  to  the  contrary. 
Till  other  time  iS  peace.' ^  THat  the  'state  of  nature* 
is  one  of  universal  war  is  proved^.  Hoboes  contends,  by  our 
conduct  as  individuals  and  as  nations. '  Do  we  not,  when 
we  travel,  arm  ourselves  with  weapons  of  defence  ;  do  we 
not  lock  our  doors  and  chests  when  we  stay  at  home  ? 
Does  not  the  man  who  thus  protects  himself  against  his 
fellows  '  as  much  accuse  mankind  by  his  actions,  as  I  do 
by  my  words  ? '  And  are  not  nations  '  in  the  state  and 
posture  of  gladiators  ;  having  their  weapons  pointing,  and 
their  eyes  fixed  on  one  another ;  that  is,  their  forts, 
garrisons,  and  guns  upon  the  frontiers  of  their  kingdoms  ; 
and  continual  spies  upon  their  neighbours  ;  which  is  a 
posture  of  war  ? '  ^ 

Jn  this  'state  of  nature'  there  is  _iio_-di6tinction 
between  justice  and  injustice  ;  might  is  the  only  rule 
or^right>  '  To  this  war  of  every  man,  against  every  man^ 
tHTs  also  is  consequent  ;  that  riothing  can  be  unjust. 
The  notions  of  right  and  wrong,  justice  and  injustice,  *'^ 
have  there  no  place.  Where  there  is  no  common  power, 
there  is  no  law  :  where  no  law,  no  injustice.  Force, 
and  fraud,  are  in  war  the  two  cardinal  virtues.  .  .  . 
It  is  consequent  also  to  the  same  condition,  that  there 
can  be  no  propriety,  no  dominion,  no  mine  and  thine 
distinct  ;  but  only  that  to  be  every  man's,  that  he  can 
get ;  and  for  so  long,  as  he  can  keep  it.'  ^     The  intoler- 

^  Lev. ,  pt.  i.  ch.  xiii.  *  Loc.  cit.  '  Loc.  cit. 


68  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

able  misery  of  such  a  condition  is  graphically  described. 
*  Whatsoever  therefore  is  consequent  to  a  time  of  war, 
where  every  man  is  enemy  to  every  man  ;  the  same  is 
consequent  to  the  time,  wherein  men  live  without  other 
security,  than  what  their  own  strength,  and  their  own 
invention  shall  furnish  them  withal.  In  such  condition, 
there  is  no  place  for  industry ;  because  the  fruit  thereof 
is  uncertain  :  and  consequently  no  culture  of  the  earth  ; 
no  navigation,  nor  use  of  the  commodities  that  may  be 
imported  by  sea ;  no  commodious  building  ;  no  instru- 
ments of  moving,  and  removing,  such  things  as  require 
much  force  ;  no  knowledge  of  the  face  of  the  earth  ; 
no  account  of  time  ;  no  arts  ;  no  letters  ;  no  society  ; 
and  which  is  worst  of  all,  continual  fear,  and  danger 
of  violent  death ;  and  the  life  of  man  solitary,  poor, 
nasty,  brutish,  and  short.' ^  The  contrast  is  more 
succinctly  stated  in  another  work.  'The  natural  state 
hath  the  same  proportion  to  the  civil  (I  mean,  liberty  to 
subjection),  which  passion  hath  to  reason,  or  a  beast  to 
a  man.'  ^  *  Justice  and  charity,  the  twin  sisters  of 
peace,'  and  all  the  other  virtues,  are  the  fruit  of  that 
settled  order  for  which  man  is  compelled,  if  he  would 
live-^t  all,  to  exchange  his  natural  right  to  all  things. 

[The  deliverance  from  this  '  state  of  nature,'  the  means 
of  transition  from  war  to  peace,  is  found  partly  in  the 
passions  or  natural  dispositions  of  man,  partly  in  his 
reason.  *The  passions  that  incline  men  to  peace,  are 
fear  of  death  ;  desire  of  such  things  as  are  necessary  to 
commodious  living ;  and  a  hope  by  their  industry  to 
obtain  them.'  And  '  reason  suggesteth  convenient 
articles  of  peace,  upon  which  men  may  be  drawn  to 
agreement.'  ^  These  articles  of  peace  are  those  '  Laws 
of  Nature '  '  by  which  a  man  is  forbidden  to  do  that  which 
is  destructive  of  his  life,  or  taketh  away  the  means  of 
preserving  the  same ;  and  to  omit  that,  by  which  he 
thinketh  it  may  be  best  preserved.'  *  They  are  im- 
mutable and  eternal,  since  'it  can  never  be   that   war 

^  /,ev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  xiii.  •  Works,  ii.  107, 

•  Lev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  xiii.  *  I6id. ,  pt.  i.  ch.  xiv. 


HOBBES  69 

shall  preserve  life,  and  peace  destroy  it ' ;  and  *  the  science 
of  these  is  the  true  moral  philosophy.'  Virtue  is  *the 
means  of  peaceable,  sociable,  and  comfortable  living ' ;  ^ 
vice  is  the  opposite  type  of  conduct. 

The  first  law  of  nature  is  'that  every  man  ought  to 
endeavour  peace,  as  far  as  he  has  hope  of  obtaining  it ; 
and  when  he  cannot  obtain  it,  that  he  may  seek,  and 
use,  all  helps  and  advantages  of  war.'  ^  The  second  is 
*  that  a  man  be  willing,  when  others  are  so  too,  as  far 
forth  as  for  peace  and  defence  of  himself  he  may  think 
it  necessary,  to  lay  down  his  right  to  all  things ;  and  be 
contented  with  so  much  liberty  against  other  men,  as 
he  would  allow  other  men  against  himself.'  A  right 
may  be  laid  down  either  by  simple  renunciation, /when 
he  cares  not  to  whom  the  benefit  thereof  redoundeth,' 
or  by  transference, '  when  he  intendeth  the  benefit  thereof 
to  some  certain  person,  or  persons.'  When,  in  either 
of  these  ways,  a  man  has  abandoned  his  natural  right, 
he  is  said  to  be  *  obliged '  or  *  bound '  not  to  hinder  its 
new  possessor  from  the  benefit  of  it :  *  he  ought,  and  it 
is  his  duty,  not  to  make  void  that  voluntary  act  of  his 
own;'  *such  hindrance  is  injustice,  and  injury.'^  The 
rmutual  transference  of  rights  is  what  we  mean  by 
[  *  contract,'  and  the  expression  of  contract  by  word  or  sign 
\is  a  *  covenant.'  The  third  law  of  nature,  therefore,  is 
that  men  perform  their  covenants  made.' 

But  these  laws  of  nature,  and  the  others  which  Hobbes 
leduces  from  them,  are  contrary  to  our  natural  passions ; 
and  'covenants  without  the  sword  are  but  words.'  To 
enforce  these  covenants,  to  make  them  binding  in  foro 
externa^  that  is,  in  external  deed,  as  well  as  in  foro  interna, 
or  in  the  will  and  disposition  of  the  individual,  it  is 
necessary  to  create  a  common  power,  which  shall  punish 
Ithose  who  break  them.  The  only  way  to  create  such 
common  power  is  for  all  the  individuals  to  enter  into 
m  original  contract  'to  confer  all  their  power  and 
slfrength  upon  one  man,  or  upon  one  assembly  of  men, 

I  Lev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  xv.  *  Ibid.,  pt.  i.  ch.  xiv.  '  Loc.  cit. 


70  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

that  may  reduce  all  their  wills,  by  plurality  of  voices, 
unto  one  will :  which  is  as  much  as  to  say,  to  appoint  one 
man,  or  assembly  of  men,  to  bear  their  person.  .  .  .  This 
is  more  than  consent,  or  concord  ;  it  is  a  real  unity  of 
them  all,  in  one  and  the  same  person,  made  by  covenant 
of  every  man  with  every  man,  in  such  manner,  as  if  every 
man  should  say  to  every  man,  "I  authorise  and  give 
up  my  right  of  governing  myself,  to  this  man,  or  to  this 
assembly  of  men,  on  this  condition,  that  thou  give  up  thy 
right  to  him,  and  authorise  all  his  actions  in  like  manner." 
This  done,  the  multitude  so  united  in  one  person,  is 
called  a  commonwealth.'  A  commonwealth  may  there- 
fore be  defined  as  *one  person,  of  whose  acts  a  great 
multitude,  by  mutual  covenants  one  with  another,  have 
made  themselves  the  author,  to  the  end  he  may  use  the 
strength  and  means  of  them  all,  as  he  shall  think  ex- 
\  pedient,  for  their  peace  and  common  defence.'  ^  This 
common  or  representative  person,  whether  a  man  or  an 
assembly,  is  sovereign  ;  and  the  power  of  the  sovereign 
is,  by  its  very  nature,  absolute  and  inalienable.  The 
sovereign  cannot  be  deposed  :  the  subjects  cannot  '  transfer 
their  person  from  him  that  beareth  it,  to  another  man, 
or  other  assembly  of  men.'  Nor  can  the  sovereign  power 
be  forfeited  by  breach  of  contract ;  for  the  covenant  to 
which  it  owes  its  existence  is  only  between  the  subjects, 
not  between  the  subjects  and  the  sovereign,  and  covenants 
are  binding  only  by  the  compulsion  of  the  sovereign 
power  itself.  Finally,  the  sovereign  power  is  one  and 
indivisible  :  a  divided  sovereignty,  as,  for  example,  between 
King  and  Parliament,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms. 

The  central  feature  of  this  theory  of  the  State,  the 
so-called  *  social  contract,'  has  been  constantly  misunder- 
stood, as  implying  that  the  State  owes  its  historical  origin 
to  such  a  contract.  It  is  quite  clear  that  what  Hobbes 
is  really  giving  is  a  logical  analysis  of  the  implications  or 
presuppositions,  not  a  historical  account  of  the  genesis, 
of  the  State  and  political  obligation.     He  distinguishes, 

'  ^  Lev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  xvii. 


HOBBES  71 

moreover,  between  two  modes  in  which  the  sovereign 
power  and,  with  it,  the  commonwealth  itself,  may  be 
established,  namely,  by  '  institution '  and  by  *  acquisi- 
tion'; and  he  calls  the  latter  the  *  natural'  form  of 
political  society.  This  type  of  State  is  exemplified  not 
only  in  all  cases  of  dominion  by  conquest,  but  also  in 
the  family  and  in  the  relation  of  master  and  servant.  In 
calling  this  kind  of  society  natural,  as  Croom  Robertson 
remarks,  'he  not  obscurely  suggests  that  the  institutive 
is  first  only  in  the  logical,  not  the  historical,  order.  /)n^^ 
The  state  of  nature,  if  it  ever  actually  existed,  must^liave  \)y  ^ 
^een  put  an  en^~~to  b  vthe^Ppefior'TiTrghf  of  some  men 
rather  than~by  the  denberate  consent  of  all ;  but  how 
could  It  ever  have  existed  in  fact,  when  tEere  never  was  a 
time  that  there  were  no  masters,  or  at  least  fathers  ? '  ^  It 
has  often  been  asked.  How  could  the  original  contract 
ever  have  taken  place,  seeing  that  the  parties  to  it  must 
have  known  that  it  was  not  binding  in  the  state  of  nature 
from  which  it  was  yet  the  only  deliverance  ?  If,  however, 
we  think  of  it  as  the  logical  presupposition  of  the  State, 
such  a  question  becomes  unmeaning. 

To  understand  the  theory,  it  is  necessary  to  take 
account  of  the  political  circumstances  out  of  which  it 
arose,  and  which  explain  the  practical,  as  well  as  the 
theoretical,  interest  of  the  argument  for  Hobbes  himself. 
He  speaks  of  'my  discourse  of  Civil  and  Ecclesiastical  ' 
Government'  as  'occasioned  by  the  disorders  of  the 
present  time,'  and  in  the  Preface  to  the  Philosophical 
Rudiments  concerning  Governments  and  Society  he  thus  ex- 
plains the  appearance  of  this  treatise  before  the  first  and 
second  parts  of  his  system  :  '  Whilst  I  contrive,  order, 
pensively  and  slowly  compose  these  matters  ...  it  so 
happened  in  the  interim,  that  my  country,  some  few 
years  before  the  civil jwars  did  rage,  was  boiling  hot  with, 
questions  conceiving  the  rights  of  dominion  and^jjie 
Obedience  due  from  subjects,  the  true  forerunners  of  an 
approaching^  war ;    and  was  the   cause~"which,  all  those 

^  Hobbes,  in  *  Philosophical  Classics,'  pp.  145-6. 


72  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

other  matters  deferred,  ripened  and  plucked  from  me  this 
third  part,  .  .  .  Yet  I  have  not  made  it  out  of  a  desire  of 
praise  .  .  .  but  for  your  sakes,  readers,  who  I  persuaded 
myself,  when  you  should  rightly  apprehend  and  thoroughly 
understand  this  doctrine  I  here  present  you  with,  would 
rather  choose  to  brook  with  patience  some  inconveniences 
under  government  (because  human  affairs  cannot  possibly 
be  without  some),  than  self-opinionatedly  to  disturb  the 
quiet  of  the  public.'^  The  question  raised  by  the  civil 
war  and  the  revolution  is,  in  the  eyes  of  Hobbes,  the  same 
as  that  which  had  chiefly  perplexed  the  statesmanship  of 
Bacon,  the  question  of  the  seat  of  sovereignty  in  the 
English  State  ;  and  Hobbes  agrees  with  Bacon  in  holding 
not  only  that  sovereignty  cannot  be  divided  between  King 
and  Parliament,  but  that  its  seat  is  in  the  Monarch. 
What  was  for  Bacon  merely  a  problem  of  practical  states- 
manship seemed  to  Hobbes,  who  had  neither  the  responsi- 
bility nor  the  opportunity  of  the  statesman,  a  problem  of 
which  the  only  satisfactory  solution  could  be  found  in  a 
theory  of  the  essential  nature  of  sovereignty  and  of  the 
functions  and  rights  of  the  sovereign.  In  the  fate  of  the 
sovereign  was  involved  the  fate  of  the  State  itself;  the 
attack  upon  the  sovereign  was  in  reality  an  attack  upon 
the  State.  Hobbes  professes  to  be  indifferent  to  the  alter- 
natives of  monarchy,  aristocracy,  and  democracy.  But 
whether  the  sovereignty  be  vested  in  one  man  or  in  an 
assembly,  large  or  small,  it  must  reside  in  a  single  authority, 
it  must  not  be  divided  between  King  and  Parliament  :  a 
*  mixed  monarchy '  is  a  radically  unsound  form  of  political 
constitution.  And  it  is  still  more  evident  to  him  that  a 
revolution,  as  such,  means  the  dissolution  of  the  State,  the 
substitution  of  anarchy  for  the  settled  order  of  political 
existence. 

What  Hobbes  is  concerned,  therefore,  above  all  things  to 
establish  is  the  absoluteness  and  legal  irresponsibility  of  the 
sovereign  power  in  the  State.  But  since  he  is  convinced 
that,  in  defending  the  sovereign,  he  is  defending  the  pre- 

*  Works,  ii.  pp.  xx.-xxii. 


[-  HOBBES  73 

Uupposition  of  the  very  existence  of  the  State,  he  finds  it 
jnecessary  to  raise  the  previous  question  of  the  value  of 
tthe  State  itself  to  man  as  an  individual.  And  in  spite  of 
/the  phrase  *  state  of  nature,'  which  has  unfortunately 
/drawn  the  attention  of  his  critics  away  from  the  central 
J  point  of  his  answer  to  this  question,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  his  main  purpose  was  to  show  how  deeply  natural 
the  State  is,  how  it  is  nature's  (or  reason's)  own  way  of 
deliverance  from  the  untold  misery  of  unpolitical  existence 
or  anarchy.  The  end  which,  in  his  judgment,  justifies 
the  State  and,  therefore,  absolute  sovereignty,  is  the 
common  good.  It  is  better,  incomparably  better,  for  the 
individual  to  render  unquestioning  obedience  to  the 
sovereign  power,  and  thus  to  secure  all  the  blessings  of 
life  in  an  ordered  society,  than  to  purchase  liberty  at  the 
price  of  anarchy.  As  Professor  Taylor  points  out,  what 
he  is  defending  is  not  the  doctrine  of  the  'divine  right' 
of  the  monarch  :  his  view  is  thoroughly  democratic,  and 
it  was  with  a  true  insight  that  the  later  Utilitarians  re- 
cognised its  essential  identity  with  their  own.  *  Though 
Hobbes's  argument  amounts  to  a  defence  of  absolutism, 
the  defence  is  throughout  based  on  rationalistic  and,  con- 
sequently, democratic  grounds.  .  .  .  There  is  much  more 
community  of  spirit  between  Hobbes  and  Locke  or  Sidney, 
or  even  Rousseau,  than  between  Hobbes  and  Filmer.'  ^ 

There  was  ever  present  to  the  mind  of  Hobbes  a  second 
and  quite  different  menace  to  the  integrity  of  the  State, 
the  rival  claim  of  the  Church  to  dominion  over  the  indi- 
vidual ;  and  though  he  makes  no  discrimination  between 
the  churches,  Roman,  Anglican,  or  Presbyterian,  so  far 
as  this  claim  is  concerned,  it  is  clearly  the  power  of  the  / 
(Papacy  that  he  chiefly  fears.  The  Church  of  Rome,/ 
as  such,  claims  to  override  the  allegiance  of  the  subject 
to  his  earthly  sovereign;  it  would  set  up  'supremacy 
against  sovereignty ;  canons  against  laws  ;  and  a  ghostly 
authority  against  the  civil.'  Against  the  political  and 
temporal  sanctions  of  conduct,  it  brings  to  bear  upon  man 

*  Hobbes,  in  Constable's  •  Philosophies  Ancient  and  Modem,'  pp.  91-2. 


74  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

the  supernatural  and  eternal  sanctions  of  religion.  By 
playing  upon  that  '  superstitious  fear  of  spirits,'  that  '  fear 
of  things  invisible,'  which  is  '  the  natural  seed  '  of  religion 
and  of  superstition  alike,  it  has  succeeded  in  establishing 
itself  in  the  place  of  the  Roman  empire,  and  threatens 
man  with  a  more  ignoble  bondage.  '  If  a  man  consider 
the  original  of  this  great  ecclesiastical  dominion,  he  will 
easily  perceive,  that  the  Papacy  is  no  other  than  the 
ghost  of  the  deceased  Roman  empire,  sitting  crowned 
upon  the  grave  thereof  For  so  did  the  Papacy  start  up 
on  a  sudden  out  of  the  ruins  of  that  heathen  power.' ^  The 
acceptance  of  this  claim  means  either  a  dualism  between 
the  temporal  and  the  spiritual  power  which  negates  the 
sovereignty  of  the  State,  or  the  absorption  of  the  State 
in  the  Church,  which  contradicts  no  less  violently  the 
idea  of  the  State.  Hobbes's  solution  of  the  problem  is 
to  reverse  the  subordination,  and  to  make  the  Church 
the  servant  of  the  State.  It  is  to  the  State,  he  holds,  that 
we  owe  the  fundamental  distinction  between  true  religion 
and  vain  superstition  ;  it  is  from  the  State,  therefore,  that 
the  Church  derives  her  authority.  '  Religion  is  not 
philosophy,  but  law.'  We  know  nothing,  as  we  have 
seen,  about  God  and  the  supernatural ;  in  these  questions, 
as  much  as  in  questions  of  ordinary  conduct,  we  must 
be  guided  by  the  authority  of  the  State.  The  only  way 
to  save  the  integrity  of  the  State  is  to  absorb  the  Church 
in  it,  and  thus  make  the  latter  the  organ  and  instrument 
of  the  former.  Church  and  State  are  a  single  society, 
*  which  is  called  a  civil  State,  for  that  the  subjects  of  it 
are  men,  and  a  Church,  for  that  the  subjects  thereof  are 
Christians.' 

In  spite  of  the  democratic  purpose  which  really  inspires 
his  political  theory,  the  outcome  of  Hobbes's  speculations 
is  thus  seen  to  be  the  justification  of  the  complete  sub- 
jection of  the  individual  to  the  State,  the  vindication 
of  a  practically  unqualified  political  despotism.  The 
essentially  true  doctrine  of  sovereignty  becomes,  in   his 

Lev.,  pt.  iv.  ch.  xlvii.      ' 


^  ^  HOBBES  75 

hands,  the  false  and  pernicious  doctrine  that  the  despotic 
type  of  government  is  the  true  and  only  possible  consti- 
tution of  the  State.  This  disappointing  result  is  due 
partly  to  the  political  circumstances  which  were  the 
occasion  of  the  whole  inquiry,  partly  to  fundamental 
defects  in  Hobbes's  own  philosophy.  So  far  as  the  first 
of  these  causes  is  concerned,  it  is  only  fair  to  Hobbes 
to  remember  that  to  him  the  only  alternatives  could 
hardly  fail  to  appear  to  be  despotism  and  anarchy.  It 
would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  him  to  have  foreseen 
the  actual  solution  of  the  problem  of  sovereignty  in  a 
constitutional  monarchy,  in  a  more  truly  democratic  and 
representative  form  of  government  in  which  the  seat 
of  sovereignty  is  found  rather  in  Parliament  than  in  the 
King.  A  theory  more  nearly  answering  to  these  facts 
of  the  growing  political  life  of  England  we  shall  find  in 
the  important  development  and  revision  of  the  *  Social 
Contract'  theory_of_the  State  which  we  owe  to  Locke. 

[hH"  deeper'€xplanation~5f''thB~irTade(jnaeTes~Df  Hobbes's     ^i 
/political   theory  is  to  be  found   in   his  egoistic  view   of       I 
human  nature.     If  we  are  to  derive  the  State  from  human 
nature,  as  we  must,  it  must   be  from  such  a  nature  as 
Aristotle  or  Grotius  ascribed  to  man,  rational  in  a  deeper     ^C\   ^^ 
sense  than  Hobbes  admits,  and  social  in  a  sense  which  J/  ^\0^ 
he    denies.      An    individual    who    cannot    recognise    a  jp 
common  good,  or  any  good  at  all  except  his  own  *  preser- 
vation'  and  ^  delectation/  can  never  be  a  citizen  ;  such 
individuals  are  incapable  of  any  real  'social  contract.'     It 
was  reserved  for  Rousseau  to  develop  the  fuller  truth  of 
a  political  theory  which,  in  its  author's  hands,  remained 
inevitably  incomplete  and  misleading. 

Even  in  Hobbes's  own  statement  of  it,  however,  there 
are  suggestions  of  this  later  development.  Insistent  as  he  is 
upon  the  absoluteness  and  irresponsibility  of  the  sovereign 
power,  he  recognises  the  existence  of  certain  limits  to  its 
legitimate  exercise.  The  essential  limit  is  found  in  the 
end  for  the  realisation  of  which  the  State  exists,  namely, 
the  preservation  of  the  life  of  the  individual.  *If  the 
sovereign  command  a  man,  though  justly  condemned,  to 


76  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

kill,  wound,  or  maim  himself;  or  not  to  resist  those  that 
assault  him ;  or  to  abstain  from  the  use  of  food,  air, 
medicine,  or  any  other  thing,  without  which  he  cannot 
live  ;  yet  hath  that  man  the  liberty  to  disobey.  .  .  .  When, 
therefore,  our  refusal  to  obey  frustrates  the  end  for  which 
the  sovereignty  was  ordained  ;  then  there  is  no  liberty  to 
refuse  :  otherwise  there  is.'  ^  Similarly,  he  argues,  the 
validity  of  the  commands  of  the  sovereign  is  conditioned 
by  his  ability  to  discharge  the  office  of  sovereign,  that  is, 
to  protect  his  subjects.  *The  obligation  of  subjects  to 
the  sovereign  is  understood  to  last  as  long,  and  no  longer, 
than  the  power  lasteth,  by  which  he  is  able  to  protect 
them.  For  the  right  men  have  by  nature  to  protect 
themselves,  when  none  else  can  protect  them,  can  by  no 
covenant  be  relinquished.  The  sovereignty  is  the  soul  of 
the  commonwealth  ;  which  once  departed  from  the  body, 
the  members  do  no  more  receive  their  motion  from  it. 
The  end  of  obedience  is  protection  ;  which,  wheresoever 
a  man  seeth  it,  either  in  his  own,  or  in  another's  sword, 
nature  applieth  his  obedience  to  it,  and  his  endeavour  to 
maintain  it.'  ^  And  though,  in  the  Leviathan^  he  speaks  of 
the  *  office,'  rather  than  of  the  *  duty '  of  the  sovereign, 
even  in  that  treatise  he  recognises  that  the  sovereign  is 
responsible  to  God,  if  not  to  his  subjects,  and  in  the  De 
Corpore  Politico  he  says  that  *  the  duty  of  a  sovereign  con- 
sisteth  in  the  good  government  of  the  people.  And 
although  the  acts  of  sovereign  power  be  no  injuries  to  the 
subjects  who  have  consented  to  the  same  by  their  implicit 
wills,  yet  when  they  tend  to  the  hurt  of  the  people  in 
general,  they  be  breaches  of  the  law  of  nature,  and  of  the 
divine  law  ;  and  consequently,  the  contrary  acts  are  the 
duties  of  sovereigns,  and  required  at  their  hands  to  the 
utmost  of  their  endeavour,  by  God  Almighty,  under  the 
pain  of  eternal  death.' ^ 

Whatever  may  be  the  merits  or  the  demerits  of  the 
philosophy  of  Hobbes,  there  can  be  only  one  opinion  as  to 

^  Lev.,  pt.  iv.  ch.  xxi.  '  Works,  ii.  178. 

3  Works,  iv.  213.  Cf.  Works,  iv.  213,  214, 


HOBBES  77 

the  quality  of  its  literary  expression.  Of  his  writings  it  is 
even  more  true  than  of  those  of  Bacon,  that  the  language  is 
a  well-nigh  perfect  instrument  of  philosophical  exposition 
and  argument.     '  Among  English  writers,'  says  Masson, 

*  there  arc  few  comparable  to  Hobbes  for  combined  per- 
spicuity and  strength.  Every  sentence  is  as  clear  as  can 
be,  and  yet  full  of  independence  and  character.  Happy 
and  memorable  expressions  abound,  and  in  page  after  page 
there  breaks  out  the  sarcastic  humour  of  one  who  sees  the 
faces  of  his  readers  as  he  writes,  and  of  some  readers  in 
particular,  and  hits  the  harder  the  more  they  wince.'  ^  In 
the  Epistle  Dedicatory  to  the  Human  Nature^  he  apologises 
for  the  style,  which  is  '  the  worse  because,  whilst  I  was 
writing,  I  consulted  more  with  logic  than  with  rhetoric' 
But  the  supreme  merit  of  his  style  is  its  perfect  appropri- 
ateness to  the  subject  and  the  argument.     As  Hallam  says, 

*  Hobbes's  language  is  so  lucid  and  concise,  that  it  would 
almost  be  as  improper  to  put  an  algebraical  process  in 
different  terms  as  some  of  his  metaphysical  paragraphs.' 
If  he  seldom  moves  us,  or  stimulates  the  imagination,  as 
Bacon  does,  yet  in  the  essential  qualities  of  lucidity  and 
vigour  and  in  the  characteristically  Baconian  quality  of 
succinctness,  of  packing  a  paragraph  into  a  sentence  or  a 
phrase,  he  is  not  second  even  to  Bacon.  These  qual-'ties 
are  sufficiently  exemplified  in  the  numerous  citations  which 
have  been  made  in  the  foregoing  account  of  his  philosophy  ; 
but  it  may  perhaps  be  well  to  add  two  passages,  chosen  out 
of  many,  as  striking  examples  of  his  best  writing.  The 
one  is  part  of  the  comparison  of  Monarchy  and  Democracy 
which  occurs  in  the  Philosophical  Rudiments  concerning 
Government  and  Society  : 

*  But  perhaps  for  this  very  reason,  some  will  say  that  a 
popular  State  is  to  be  preferred  before  a  monarchical ; 
because  that  where  all  men  have  a  hand  in  public  busi- 
nesses, there  all  have  an  opportunity  to  show  their  wisdom, 
knowledge,  and  eloquence,  in  deliberating  matters  of  the 
greatest  difficulty  and  moment ;  which  by  reason  of  that 

1  Lt/e  of  Milton,  vi.  288. 


78  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

desire  of  praise  which  is  bred  in  human  nature,  is  to  them 
who  excel  in  such-like  faculties,  and  seem  to  themselves 
to  exceed  others,  the  most  delightful  of  all  things.  But 
in  a  monarchy,  this  same  way  to  obtain  praise  and  honour 
is  shut  up  to  the  greatest  part  of  subjects  ;  and  what  is  a 
grievance  if  this  be  none  ?  I  will  tell  you  :  to  see  his 
opinion,  whom  we  scorn,  preferred  before  ours  ;  to  have 
our  wisdom  undervalued  before  our  own  faces ;  by  an 
uncertain  trial  of  a  little  vain  glory,  to  undergo  most 
certain  enmities  (for  this  cannot  be  avoided,  whether  we 
have  the  better  or  the  worse) ;  to  hate  and  to  be  hated,  by 
reason  of  the  disagreement  of  opinions ;  to  lay  open  our 
secret  councils  and  advices  to  all,  to  no  purpose  and  with- 
out any  benefit ;  to  neglect  the  affairs  of  our  own  family  : 
these,  I  say,  are  grievances.  But  to  be  absent  from  a 
trial  of  wits,  although  those  trials  are  pleasant  to  the 
eloquent,  is  not  therefore  a  grievance  to  them  ;  unless 
we  will  say,  that  it  is  a  grievance  to  valiant  men  to  be 
restrained  from  fighting,  because  they  delight  in  it.'  ^ 

The  other  passage  is  a  brief  paragraph  which,  accord- 
ing to  Professor  Sorley,  *  may  be  taken  as  having  started 
the  line  of  thought  which  issued  in  the  theory  of  associa- 
tion, for  a  long  time  dominant  in  English  psychology  : '  * 
*And  yet  in  this  wild  ranging  of  the  mind,  a  man 
may  oft-times  perceive  the  way  of  it,  and  the  dependence 
of  one  thought  upon  another.  For  in  a  discourse  of  our 
present  civil  war,  what  could  seem  more  impertinent,  than 
to  ask  (as  one  did)  what  was  the  value  of  a  Roman  penny  ? 
yet  the  coherence  to  me  was  manifest  enough.  For  the 
thought  of  the  war  introduced  the  thought  of  the  de- 
livering up  the  king  to  his  enemies ;  the  thought  of  that 
brought  in  the  thought  of  the  delivering  up  of  Christ ; 
and  that  again  the  thought  of  the  thirty  pence,  which 
was  the  price  of  that  treason  ;  and  thence  easily  followed 
that  malicious  question  ;  and  all  this  in  a  moment  of 
time  ;  for  thought  is  quick.'  ^ 

1  Works,  ii.  136. 

-  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature,  vol.  vii.  ch.  xii. 

'  Lev.,  pt.  i.  ch.  iii. 


6 


CHAPTER   III  f^     .^     r?>^ 


THE  IDEALISTIC   REACTION:   CAMBRIDGE 
PLATONISM  AND   RATIONALISM 

It  was  inevitable  that  the  radical  speculation  of  Hobbes, 
alike  in  the  spheres  of  metaphysics  and  of  politics,  should 
provoke  a  reaction,  and  should  rally  to  the  defence  of  the 
higher  spiritual  interests  of  human  life  those  to  w^hom 
these  interests  seemed  to  be  bound  up  with  a  spiritual 
interpretation  of  the  universe  and  a  social  interpretation 
of  human  nature.  Hobbes  had  indeed  professed  to  be  a 
defender  of  the  Christian  faith  ;  but  it  was  little  wonder 
that  this  new  *  Epicurism  '  should  seem  to  religious  thinkers 
*  but  atheism  under  a  mask,'  and  that  the  unmasking  of 
this  hidden  and,  therefore,  all  the  more  dangerous,  atheism 
should  seem  the  appointed  task  of  the  devout  thinker. 
The  fundamental  error  of  Hobbes,  as  well  as  of  Baron, 
seemed  to  such  men  to  be  the  absolute  distinction  and 
separation  of  the  spheres  of  faith  and  reason,  of  theology 
and  philosophy.  Such  a  separation  meant  the  ultimate 
denial  of  the  reasonableness  of  religion,  the  obliteration 
of  the  distinction  between  religion  and  superstition.  The 
aim  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists  was  the  reunion  of  these 
two  spheres,  the  vindication  of  the  rational  character  of 
religion. 

Apart,  however,  from  the  polemical  motive  supplied  by 
the  effort  to  refute  the  views  of  Hobbes,  these  thinkers, 
who  were  all  Churchmen  as  well  as  academic  teachers, 
were  conscious  of  another  danger  to  religion  within  the 
Church  itself.  It  is  a  notable  fact  that,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  More,  the  leading  members  of  the  school  were 
trained  in  Emmanuel  College,  the  great  Puritan  founda- 

79 


8o  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

tion  ;  and  they  were  inspired  by  the  common  ideal  of 
emancipation  from  the  narrowness  and  intolerance  of 
Puritan  dogmatism,  they  revolted  with  one  consent 
against  the  subjection  of  reason  to  faith  which  was 
demanded  by  the  Protestant  no  less  really  than  by  the 
Catholic  theology.  From  Puritan  dogmatism  and  intoler- 
ance, no  less  than  from  Prelatical  formalism,  they  appealed 
to  life  and  conduct  as  the  true  measure  of  religion.  They 
are  among  the  earliest  defenders  of  the  principle  of  tolera- 
tion. Subordinating  doctrine  to  life,  and  regarding  the 
greater  part  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Protestant '  Confessions ' 
as  mere  matter  of  opinion,  they  came  to  be  known  as  the 
*  Latitudinarians,'  and  were  eyed  askance  by  the  orthodox 
of  both  theological  parties.  Their  constant  effort  was  to 
extricate  the  essential  truth  of  Christianity  from  the 
accidents  which  had  gathered  round  it  in  the  course  of 
the  centuries,  and  this  essential  core  of  truth  was,  in 
their  eyes,  identical  with  goodness  of  life  and,  therefore, 
accessible  to  all  rational  beings.  If  they  did  not  deny 
the  distinction  between  natural  and  revealed  truth,  the 
burden  of  their  teaching  was  that  all  essential  truth  came 
to  men  by  *  the  light  of  nature,'  that  *  the  Spirit  of  a 
Man  is  the  Candle  of  the  Lord,  lighted  by  God,  and  light- 
ing us  to  God.'  1 

Still  another  influence  must  be  mentioned  as  determin- 
ing the  spirit  and  attitude  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists, 
namely,  that  of  ^Descartes.  This  influence  is  primarily 
negative.  Ignoring  the  spiritual  side  of  the  Cartesian 
philosophy,  they  are  repelled  by  its  dualism  of  thought 
and  extension,  its  separation  of  the  spheres  of  matter  and 
mind,  and  its  authentication  of  the  mechanical  method 
and  point  of  view  so  far  as  the  material  world  is  con- 
cerned. In  its  exclusion  of  the  action  of  spirit  from  the 
latter  sphere,  and  in  its  substitution  of  mechanical  for 
final  causes,  they  see  the  same  menace  to  the  interests 
of  a  spiritual  or  idealistic  interpretation  of  reality  as 
they  discover  in  the  materialism  of  Hobbes.     The  Car- 

l  Whichcote,  Aphorisms,  Campagnac's  Cambridge  Platonists,  p.  70. 


THE   IDEALISTIC   REACTION        8i 

tesians,  says  Cudworth,  '  have  an  undiscerned  tang  of  the 
mechanic  Atheism  hanging  about  them.'  In  opposition 
to  both  Hobbes  and  Descartes,  therefore,  the  Cambridge 
idealists  proclaim  the  spiritual  constitution  of  the  so-called 
material  world.  Not  only  are  there,  as  Descartes  admitted, 
spiritual  as  well  as  material  substances,  but  spiritual  sub- 
stance alone  truly  is.  Matter,  truly  understood,  is  spirit. 
Only  from  the  spiritual  constitution  of  the  universe  can  a 
divine  or  universal  Spirit  be  inferred.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  Cambridge  Platonists  were 
influenced  positively,  as  well  as  negatively,  by  the  Car- 
tesian philosophy,  of  which  More  especially  was  in  his 
youth  an  enthusiastic  admirer.  The  great  questions 
with  which  they  are  concerned  are  the  same  as  those 
which  had  preoccupied  Descartes — the  existence  of  God 
and  the  relation  of  matter  to  spirit.  And  their  aim  is  the 
same  as  his — to  show  the  rational  basis  of  faith,  to  reduce 
its  content  to  *  clear  and  distinct  ideas.'  ^ 

While  the  only  names  that  have  become  widely  known 
are  those  of  Cudworth  and  More,  three  other  names  are 
too  important  to  be  altogether  overlooked.  The  move- 
ment owes  its  origin  to  the  remarkable  influence,  as  a 
teacher  and  preacher,  if  not  as  a  writer,  of  Benjamin 
Whichcote,  an  influence  which  was  extended  by  the 
similar  activities  of  John  Smith  and  Nathaniel  Culverwel, 
although  the  latter,  according  to  Professor  Sorley,  *can 
hardly  be  counted  as  belonging  to  the  group.'  It  is  to  the 
treatises  of  Ralph  Cudworth  on  The  True  Intellectual 
System  of  the  Universe  and  on  Eternal  and  Immutable 
Morality  that  we  must  look  for  a  systematic  account 
of  the  philosophy  of  the  school.  Henry  More,  whose 
chief  philosophical  work  is  the  Encheiridion  Ethicum,  '  re- 
presents,' as  TuUoch  says,  *  more  than  any  other  member 
of  the  school,  the  mystical  and  theosophic  side  of  the 
Cambridge  movement.' ^     He  is  not  the  least  interesting 

1  Cf.  Tulloch,  Rational  Theology  in  England  in  the  Seventetnth 
Century,  ii.  17-20. 

2  Ency.  Brit.,  9th  ed.,  art.  '  Henry  More.' 

F 


82  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

or   important    in   a   group  of  singularly   impressive  and 
influential  personalities. 

If  it  was  in  More  that  the  mystical  tendency  reached  its 
culmination,  it  is  not  to  be  denied  that  such  a  tendency 
was  present  in  the  movement  from  the  first.  In  its  other 
representative  members,  however,  this  tendency  was  kept 
well  subordinated  to  the  rationalism  which  was  even  more 
characteristic  of  the  movement  as  a  whole.  It  is  true 
that  none  of  the  so-called  Cambridge  Platonists  clearly 
distinguished  between  the  original  teaching  of  Plato 
himself  and  that  of  the  Neo-Platonists.  As  TuUoch  says, 
*The  suspicion  that  Plotinus  and  Proclus,  while  building 
upon  the  Platonic  basis,  may  have  had  little  or  none  of  the 
spirit  of  the  master-builder,  never  disturbed  them.  Plato- 
nism  was  to  them  a  vast  mass  of  transcendental  Thought, 
dating  from  Pythagoras  and  even  Moses,  and  stretching 
downwards  through  Alexandrian  and  mediaeval  Jewish 
schools  ;  and  it  was  this  Platonism  of  tradition — of  the 
successive  spiritualistic  schools  which  had  contended  for 
a  super-sensual  philosophy,  and  peopled  the  world  of  faith 
with  many  fantastic  reveries — which  ruled  their  spirits 
and  inspired  their  philosophic  ambition.  In  this  sense 
alone  can  they  be  called  Platonists.'^  On  the  other  hand, 
it  is  an  exaggeration  to  say,  with  Coleridge,  that  they  were 
*more  truly  Plotinists'  than  Platonists,^  or  to  attribute 
to  them  'a  corrupt,  mystical,  theurgical,  pseudo-Plato- 
nism,  which  infected  the  rarest  minds  under  the  Stuart 
dynasty.'  ^  It  is  true  that  they  shared  many  of  the  super- 
stitious ideas  of  their  age,  and  that  their  attitude  to  earlier 
thinkers  was  uncritical ;  that,  in  Tulloch's  words,  '  they 
leant  too  fondly  on  the  past,  and  made  too  much  of 
ancient  wisdom.'  *  But  the  main  lines  of  their  thought 
are  clearly  derived  from  Plato  himself,  and  from  such 
dialectical  dialogues  as  the  Theatetus  and  the  Parmenides 
hardly  less  than  from  the  more  poetical  and  mystical  dia- 
logues. In  Cudworth  this  return  to  the  original  and  more 
dialectical  teaching  of  Plato  is  especially  characteristic. 

1  Rational  Theology,  ii.  481.  *  Notes  on  English  Divines,  i.  351. 

•  Ibid.,  i.  130.  *  Rational  Theology,  ii.  137. 


THE  IDEALISTIC   REACTION        83 

Their  undue  dependence  upon  the  past  shows  its  evil 
influence  not  less  in  the  style  or  manner  than  in  the 
matter  of  their  writing.  Their  style  is  scholastic  and 
pedantic  to  a  degree  almost  intolerable  to  the  modern 
reader.  The  quotations  with  which  they  fill  their  pages 
fatally  interrupt  the  continuity  of  the  argument,  and 
would  be  intolerable  even  as  foot-notes  in  a  book  of  the 
present  day.  It  is  as  if  they  had  not  really  mastered  and 
assimilated  the  thought  of  the  past  to  which  they  are  so 
anxious  to  serve  themselves  heirs.  They  seem  to  feel  it 
necessary  to  dress  out  their  own  ideas  in  the  borrowed 
feathers  of  illustrious  names  ;  afraid  to  trust  to  the  inherent 
weight  of  their  argument,  they  seek  some  more  sure 
support  for  it  in  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients.  *They 
crowd  their  books  with  specimens  of  all  the  intellectual 
furniture  which  they  have  gathered  in  the  course  of  their 
studies.'  ^  It  is  a  remarkable  testimony  to  the  real  power 
of  their  thinking,  as  well  as  to  their  real  gift  of  expression, 
that  in  spite  of  these  defects  their  writings  are  studded 
with  so  many  fine  and  memorable  sayings  which  them- 
selves bear  well  the  ordeal  of  quotation.  Of  the  founder 
of  the  school  Westcott  says,  '  There  are  few  prose 
writers  of  any  time  from  whom  one  could  gather  more 
"jewels  five-words  long  "  than  from  Whichcote.'  ^ 

The  philosophy  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists  centres  in 
three  main  positions  :  (i)  the  unity  of  faith  and  reason,  of 
religion  and  life ;  (2)  the  spiritual  constitution  of  the 
universe  ;  and  (3)  the  reasonableness,  as  opposed  to  the 
arbitrariness  of  morality,  its  foundation  in  reason  rather 
than  in  mere  will,  and  hence  its  absolute,  as  opposed  to 
its  merely  relative  validity. 

(i)  The  essential  identity  of  the  content  of  faith  with  that 
of  reason  is  a  favourite  topic  with  all  the  writers  of  this 
school  ;  it  is  indeed  the  starting-point  of  their  entire  intel- 
lectual effort.  *  Truth  is  the  Soul's  Health  and  Strength, 
natural  and  true   Perfection.  .  .  .    No   sooner  doth    the 

^  TuUoch,  Rational  TJieology,  ii.  477. 
*  Religious  Thought  in  the  West,  p.  371. 


84  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Truth  of  God  come  to  our  Soul's  Sight,  but  our  Soul 
knows  her,  as  her  first  and  old  Acquaintance  :  which, 
though  they  have  been  by  some  Accident  unhappily  parted 
a  great  while ;  yet  having  now,  through  the  Divine 
Providence,  happily  met,  they  greet  one  another,  and 
renew  their  Acquaintance,  as  those  that  were  first  and 
ancient  Friends.'  ^  '  That  which  is  the  Height  and  Excel- 
lency of  Humane  Nature,  viz.  our  Reason,  is  not  laid  aside 
nor  discharged,  much  less  is  it  confounded  by  any  of 
the  Materials  of  Religion ;  but  awakened,  excited,  em- 
ployed, directed,  and  improved  by  it.'  '  In  all  things  of 
weight,  in  the  great  Points  of  Conscience,  in  the  great 
Materials  of  Religion,  there  is  a  Reason  in  the  Things, 
that  doth  enforce  them,  and  enjoin  them  upon  us,  and 
require  them  of  us.'  *This  is  the  peculiarity  of  Humane 
Nature,  that  through  the  Reason  of  his  Mind,  he  may 
come  to  understand  the  Reason  of  Things  :  and  this  is  that 
you  are  to  do  ;  and  there  is  no  coming  to  Religion  but 
this  way.'  ^  Very  similar  is  the  language  of  Smith  in  the 
discourse  on  The  Excellency  and  Nobleness  of  True  Religion. 
*It's  a  fond  imagination  that  Religion  should  extinguish 
Reason  ;  whenas  Religion  makes  it  more  illustrious  and 
vigorous ;  and  they  that  live  most  in  the  exercise  of 
Religion,  shall  find  their  Reason  most  enlarged.'  '  Un- 
reasonableness or  the  smothering  and  extinguishing  the 
Candle  of  the  Lord  within  us  is  no  piece  of  Religion,  nor 
advantageous  to  it  :  that  certainly  will  not  raise  men  up 
to  God,  which  sinks  them  below  men.' 

The  intimate  connection  of  such  religious  insight  or 
knowledge  with  life  and  conduct  is  no  less  emphatically 
asserted.  *  True  piety  and  a  Godlike  pattern  of  purity ' 
is  the  *  best  way  to  thrive  in  all  spiritual  understanding  ' ; 
*a  holy  life'  is  *the  best  and  most  compendious  way  to  a 
right  belief.'  *  If  we  would  indeed  have  our  Knowledge 
thrive  and  flourish,  we  must  water  the  tender  plants  of 
it  with  Holiness.  .  .  .  The  reason  why,  notwithstanding 
all  our  acute  reasons  and  subtile  disputes,  Truth  prevails 

^  Whichcote,  Evidence  of  Divine  Truth,  Campagnac,  3,  4. 
a  Whichcote,  Work  of  Reason,  Campagnac,  51,  53. 


THE   IDEALISTIC  REACTION        85 

no  more  in  the  world,  is,  we  so  often  disjoin  Truth  and 
true  Goodness,  which  in  themselves  can  never  be  dis- 
united ;  they  grow  both  from  the  same  Root,  and  live  in 
one  another.  .  .  .  He  that  wants  true  Vertue,  in  heaven's 
Logick  is  blindy  and  cannot  see  afar  off?  ^  The  obverse  side 
of  this  relation,  namely,  that  true  religion  must  find  its 
expression  in  goodness  of  life,  is  no  less  frequently  empha- 
sised ;  but  this,  as  a  more  obvious  position,  it  is  unnecessary 
to  illustrate  by  quotation. 

(2)  We  find  the  general  argument  for  a  spiritual  inter- 
pretation of  the  universe,  as  against  the  materialism  of 
Hobbes,  set  forth  with  much  force  and  eloquence  in 
Smith's  discourses  on  The  Immortality  of  the  Soul  and  on 
The  Existence  and  Nature  of  God.  He  protests  against 
*  that  flat  and  dull  Philosophy  which  these  later  ages  have 
brought  forth,'  and  insists  upon  the  higher  validity  of 
those  principles  for  which  the  mind  of  man  is  indebted, 
not  to  the  senses,  but  to  its  own  inherent  intellectual 
power.  '  Whensoever  it  will  speculate  Truth  itself,  it  will 
not  then  listen  to  the  several  clamours  and  votes  of  these 
rude  Senses  which  always  speak  with  divided  tongues,  but 
it  consults  some  clearer  Oracle  within  itself.'  In  the 
spiritual  nature  of  the  human  soul  he  sees  the  true  revela- 
tion of  the  nature  of  God  and  the  proof  of  the  divine 
existence.  But  it  is  in  Cudworth  that  we  find  the  most 
sustained  and  convincing  refutation  of  the  materialistic 
view.  Reducing  materialism  to  sensationalism,  Cudworth 
sees  in  Hobbes  the  reviver  of  the  Protagorean  scepticism 
and,  with  obvious  indebtedness  to  the  argument  of  Plato 
in  the  Theeetetus,  deduces  from  the  self-contradictoriness 
of  such  a  scepticism  the  presence  of  rational  elements  in 
all  knowledge.  Its  essential  feature  he  finds  to  be  judg- 
ment. *  The  Sight  cannot  judge  of  Sounds  which  belong 
to  the  Hearings  nor  the  Hearing  of  Ligkt  and  Colours ; 
wherefore  that  which  judges  of  all  the  Senses  and  their 
several  Objects,  cannot  be  it  self  any  Sense,  but  something 

^  John  Smith,  Method  of  Divine  Knowledge,  Campagnac,  8l,  82. 


86  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

of  a  superior  Nature.  Moreover,  that  which  judges  that 
the  Appearances  of  all  the  Senses  have  somethingFantastical 
in  them,  cannot  possibly  be  itself  Fantastical,  but  it  must 
be  something  which  hath  a  Power  of  judging  what  Really 
and  Absolutely  is  or  is  not.  This  being  not  a  Relative, 
but  an  Absolute  Truth,  that  Sensible  Appearances  have 
something  Fantastical  in  them.'^  *  Wherefore  though 
Men  are  commonly  said  to  know  things  when  they  see  and 
feel  them,  yet  in  truth  by  their  bodily  Senses  they  perceive 
nothing  but  their  Outsides  and  External  Induments.  Just 
as  when  a  Man  looking  down  out  of  a  Window  into  the 
Streets,  is  said  to  see  Men  walking  in  the  Streets,  when 
indeed  he  perceives  nothing  but  Hats  and  Cloaths,  under 
which,  for  ought  he  knows,  there  may  be  Daedalean 
Statues  moving  up  and  down.'  ^  By  its  very  nature 
sense  can  reveal  to  the  percipient  only  appearance,  or  the 
*  phantastical  and  relative.' 

Reality,  as  distinguished  from  appearance,  is  constituted 
by  those  intelligible  forms  or  ideas  which  are  the  expres- 
sion of  the  rational  constitution  of  the  knowing  mind 
itself.  *  Knowledge  is  not  a  Passion  from  anything  without 
the  Mind,  but  an  Active  Exertion  of  the  Inward  Strength, 
Vigour  and  Power  of  the  Mind,  displaying  it  self  from 
within  ;  and  the  Intelligible  Forms  by  which  Things  are 
Understood  or  Known,  are  not  Stamps  or  Impressions 
passively  printed  upon  the  Soul  from  without,  but  Ideas 
vitally  protended  or  actively  exerted  from  within  it  self.  A 
Thing  which  is  merely  Passive  from  without,  and  doth  only 
receive  Foreign  and  Adventitious  Forms,  cannot  possibly 
Know,  Understand  or  Judge  of  that  which  it  receives, 
but  must  needs  be  a  Stranger  to  it,  having  nothing  within 
it  self  to  know  it  by.  The  Mind  cannot  know  any  thing, 
but  by  something  of  its  own,  that  is  Native,  Domestic 
and  Familiar  to  it.'  ^  Thus  it  is  to  the  knowing  intellect 
that  we  owe  the  apprehension  of  the  unity  of  the  parts  in 
a  total  object ;  intellect  alone  can  *  comprehend  the  Formal 
Reason  of  it,  as  a  Whole  made  up  of  several  Parts,  according 

*  Eternal  and  Immutable  Morality,  Bk.  ii.  ch.  vi.     Cf.  Bk.  iii.  ch.  iv. 
"  Ibid.,  Bk.  iii.  ch.  iii.  '  Ibid.,  Bk.  iv.  ch.  i. 


THE   IDEALISTIC   REACTION        87 

to  several  Relations  and  Proportions  contributing  thereto.' 
The  idea  of  this  whole  '  was  never  stamped  or  impressed 
upon  the  Soul  from  without,  but  upon  occasion  of  the 
Sensible  Idea  was  excited  and  exerted  from  the  inward 
Active  and  Comprehensive  Power  of  the  Intellect  itself.'  ^ 
It  follows  that  *  the  Mind  or  Intellect  may  well  be  called 
(though  in  another  Sense  than  Protagoras  meant  it)  The 
Measure  of  all  Things.^  ^ 

From  the  rational  constitution  of  knowledge  Cudworth 
infers  the  existence  first  of  the  rational  self  and,  secondly, 
of  God.  '  For  tho'  it  should  be  supposed  that  our  Senses 
did  deceive  us  in  all  their  Representations,  and  that  there 
were  no  Sun,  no  Moon,  no  Earth,  that  we  had  no 
Hands,  no  Feet,  no  Body,  as  by  Sense  we  seem  to  have, 
yet  Reason  tells  us  that  of  Necessity  That  must  be  some- 
thing, to  whom  these  things  seem  to  be,  because  nothing 
can  seem  to  that  that  is  not.'  ^  On  the  other  hand,  the 
constancy  of  the  existence  of  things,  independent  of  their 
being  actually  ideas  in  '  our  particular  created  minds,'  the 
eternity  and  immutability  of  real  existence,  implies  a 
divine  Mind  or  universal  Intelligence.  Geometrical  truth 
does  not  depend  for  its  reality  upon  the  apprehension  of 
the  geometrician,  or  change  with  his  advancing  know- 
ledge. It  follows  that  '  there  is  an  Eternal  Wisdom  and 
Knowledge  in  the  World,  necessarily  existing,  which  was 
never  made,  and  can  never  cease  to  be  or  be  destroyed  ; 
or,  which  is  all  one,  that  there  is  an  Infinite,  Eternal  Mind 
necessarily  existing,  that  actually  comprehends  himself, 
the  Possibility  of  all  Things,  and  the  Verities  Clinging  to 
them.  In  a  word,  that  there  is  a  God,  or  an  Omnipotent 
and  Omniscient  Being,  necessarily  existing,  who  therefore 
cannot  destroy  his  own  Being  or  Nature,  that  is,  his 
Infinite  Power  and  Wisdom.'  * 

(3)  The  real  interest  of  the  metaphysical  argument  lies, 
for  these  thinkers,  in  its  ethical  and  religious  consequences. 
They  find  in  reason  the  only  secure  basis  for  the  absolute 

^  Eternal  and  Immutable  Morality,  Bk.  iv.  ch.  ii. 

2  Ibid.,  Bk.  iv.  ch.  i.  ^  3^.  ii.  ch.  vi.         *  Ibid.,  Bk.  iv.  ch.  iv. 


88  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

obligatoriness  of  morality  :  it  is  not  mere  law,  the 
expression  of  arbitrary  will,  but  the  expression  of  the 
nature  of  things,  of  the  rational  constitution  of  the  uni- 
verse. Not  even  the  divine  Will  is  for  them  the  ultimate 
source  of  moral  laws  ;  the  divine  Will  is  guided  by  the 
divine  Reason,  or  by  regard  to  the  essential  nature  of 
things.  This  ethical  deduction,  which  is  only  briefly 
suggested  by  Cudworth,  receives  the  chief  emphasis  in 
Whichcote's  discourses.  Moral  truths,  he  says,  '  have  a 
deeper  Foundation,  greater  Ground  for  them,  than  that 
God  gave  the  Law  on  Mount  Sinai ;  or  that  he  did  after 
ingrave  it  on  Tables  of  Stone ;  or  that  we  find  the  Ten 
Commandments  in  the  Bible.  For  God  made  Man  to 
them,  and  did  write  them  upon  the  Heart  of  Man,  before 
he  did  declare  them  upon  Mount  Sinai,  before  he  ingraved 
them  upon  the  Tables  of  Stone,  or  before  they  were  writ 
in  our  Bibles ;  God  made  man  to  them,  and  wrought  His 
Law  upon  Men's  Hearts ;  and,  as  it  were,  interwove  it 
into  the  Principles  of  our  Reason  ;  and  the  things  thereof 
are  the  very  Sense  of  Man's  Soul,  and  the  Image  of  his 
Mind  :  so  that  a  Man  doth  undo  his  own  being,  departs 
from  himself,  and  unmakes  himself,  confounds  his  own 
Principles,  when  he  is  disobedient  and  unconformable  to 
them  ;  and  must  necessarily  be  self-condemned.'  ^  It  is 
no  less  characteristic  of  man's  nature  to  act  conformably 
to  these  rational  principles  than  it  is  natural  for  a  non- 
rational  being  to  be  guided  by  sense  and  impulse.  *  By 
which  you  may  see  the  Degeneracy  of  us  Mortals  ;  in 
that  the  State  below  us  remains  in  the  same  Principle  it 
was  created  in  ;  but  we  Men  do  neither  find  out  the 
Reasons  of  things,  nor  comply  with  them.  Our  Deformity 
is  more  ;  because  our  Perfection  is  more  and  the  Order  of 
our  Being  is  higher  .  .  ,  and  we  use  to  say,  the  Fault  is 
greater  in  him  that  is  in  a  higher  State.' ^ 

Outside  the  school  of  Cambridge  Platonism  the  move- 
ment of  idealistic  or  rationalistic  philosophy  in  England  in 

*  Evidence  of  Divitu  Truth,  Campagnac,  5. 
■  Christian  Religion,  Campagnac,  37. 


THE  IDEALISTIC  REACTION        89 

the  seventeenth  century  is  represented  by  two  important 
names,  Lord  Herbert  of  Cher  bury  and  Richard  Cumberland. 
The  first  of  these  writers  is  specially  remarkable  as  having 
at  a  much  earlier  period  arrived  at  a  theory  of  knowledge 
essentially  identical  with  that  of  the  Cambridge  Platonists. 
In  the  De  Veritate^  published  in  1624,  Herbert  of  Cher- 
bury  formulated  the  view  that,  in  addition  to  external  and 
internal  sense  and  the  discursive  or  reasoning  faculty,  it 
is  necessary  to  postulate  what  he  calls,  after  the  Stoics, 
*  common  notions '  or '  received  principles  of  demonstration,' 
which  are  apprehended  by  '  natural  instinct '  and  must  be 
regarded  as  the  presuppositions  rather  than  as  the  products 
of  experience.  The  mind  is,  previous  to  experience,  not  a 
tabula  rasa^  but  a  '  closed  book,'  which  is  opened  by  the 
presentation  of  sensible  objects.  Referring  to  this  theory, 
Culverwel  says :  *  There  is  a  Noble  Author  of  our  own, 
that  hath  both  his  truth  and  his  errour,  (as  he  hath  also  writ 
about  both),  who  pleads  much  for  his  Instinctus  naturales^  so 
as  that,  at  the  first  dash,  you  would  think  him  in  a  Platonical 
strain ;  but,  if  you  attend  more  to  what  he  says,  you  will 
soon  perceive  that  he  prosecutes  a  far  different  Notion, 
much  to  be  preferred  before  the  other  phancy.  For  he 
doth  not  make  these  Instincts  any  connate  Ideas,  and  repre- 
sentations of  Things  ;  but  tells  us,  that  they  are  powers 
and  faculties  of  the  Soul,  the  first-born  faculties  and  begin- 
ning of  the  Soul's  strength,  that  are  presently  espoused  to 
their  Virgin-objects  closing  and  complying  with  them, 
long  before  Discourse  can  reach  them  ;  nay,  with  such 
objects  as  Discourse  cannot  reach  at  all  in  such  a  measure 
a.nd  perfection.  .  .  .  If  you.  ask,  when  these  highest  faculties 
did  first  open  and  display  themselves,  he  tells  you,  'tis 
then  when  they  were  stimulated,  and  excited  by  outward 
Objects.^  ^  Lord  Herbert  is  better  known  as  *  the  father  of 
Deism,'  and  he  certainly  rationalises  religion  to  an  extent 
far  beyond  the  daring  of  the  Cambridge  divines.  Among 
the  'common  notions'  are  those  which  constitute  the 
natural  instinct  of  religion  and   the  essence  of  *  natural 

1  Light  of  Nature,  ch.  xi.,  Campagnac,  289,  290. 


90  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

religion,'  namely,  the  existence  of  God,  the  duty  of  worship, 
the  identity  of  worship  and  virtue,  the  duty  of  repentance, 
and  future  reward  and  punishment.  This  natural  core  of 
religion  has  been  overlaid  by  subsequent  accretions  of 
superstition  and  dogma ;  in  the  case  of  Christianity,  as 
well  as  the  other  historical  religions,  priestcraft  and  guile 
have  obscured  the  simplicity  of  natural  religion.  But  the 
author  himself  seems  more  interested  in  the  positive  than 
in  the  negative  side  of  his  argument ;  his  work  is  rather  a 
plea  for  religion,  as  fundamentally  rational  in  its  nature 
and  source,  than  a  criticism  of  actual  religion  and  theology, 
or  an  exposure  of  their  irrationality. 

Richard  Cumberland  is  a  contemporary  of  the  Cam- 
bridge Platonists,  and  has  the  same  polemical  purpose  as 
Cudworth,  namely,  the  refutation  of  the  views  of  Hobbes. 
On  the  title-page  of  his  De  Legihus  Naturae,  published  in 
1672,  he  professes  to  *  consider  and  refute'  'the  elements 
of  Mr.  Hobbes's  Philosophy,  as  well  Moral  as  Civil.'  He 
is  no  Platonist,  and  attacks  the  theory  of  Innate  Ideas  as  a 
Platonic  error.  '  The  Platonists,  indeed,  clear  up  this 
Difficulty  in  an  easier  manner,  by  the  Supposition  of  innate 
Ideas,  as  well  of  the  Laws  of  Nature  themselves,  as  of 
those  Matters  about  which  they  are  conservant ;  but, 
truly,  I  have  not  been  so  happy  as  to  learn  the  Laws  of 
Nature  in  so  short  a  way.  Nor  seems  it  to  me  well 
advised,  to  build  the  Doctrine  of  natural  Religion  and 
Morality  upon  an  Hypothesis,  which  has  been  rejected  by 
the  generality  of  PhilosopherSy  as  well  Heathen  as  Christian, 
and  can  never  be  proved  against  the  Epicureans,  with  whom 
is  our  chief  Controversy.'^  Unlike  his  predecessors,  he 
limits  the  inquiry  to  ethics,  and  seeks  to  prove  the 
*  naturalness '  of  moral  laws.  Laws  of  Nature,  in  this 
ethical  reference,  are  defined  by  him  as  *  propositions  of 
unchangeable  Truth,  which  direct  our  voluntary  Actions 
about  choosing  Good  and  Evil ;  and  impose  an  Obliga- 
tion to  external  actions  even  without  Civil  Laws,  and 
laying  aside  all  Considerations  of  those  Compacts  which 
constitute  Civil  Government.'  ^     He  defines  '  Good  '  as 

^  Introd.,  sect.  v.  *  Ch.  i.  p.  39. 


THE   IDEALISTIC   REACTION       91 

*that  which  preserves,  or  enlarges  and  perfects,  the 
Faculties  of  any  one  Thing,  or  of  several.'^  It  follows 
that  the  Law  of  Nature  prescribes  those  actions  which 
*  will  chiefly  promote  the  common  Good,  and  by  which 
only  the  entire  Happiness  of  particular  Persons  can  be 
obtained.'^  From  these  statements  it  seems  clear  that, 
while  he  accepts  Hobbes's  term  '  preservation,'  he  includes 
both  happiness  and  perfection,  or  development  of  faculty, 
as  inseparable  elements  in  the  Good.  He  is  more  con- 
cerned with  the  determination  of  the  form  of  conduct 
which  will  lead  to  the  attainment  of  this  end  ;  and  his 
conclusion  is  that  the  best  method  of  securing  it  is  that  of 
benevolence,  or  regard  for  the  common  good,  as  opposed 
to  selfish  preoccupation  with  our  own  individual  interests. 
'  The  greatest  Benevolence  of  every  rational  Agent  towards 
all,  forms  the  happiest  State  of  every,  and  of  all  the 
Benevolent,  as  far  as  is  in  their  Power  ;  and  is  necessarily 
requisite  to  the  happiest  State  which  they  can  attain,  and 
therefore  the  common  Good  is  the  supreme  Law.'  ^  This 
endeavour  to  promote  the  common  good  '  includes  our 
Love  of  God,  and  of  all  Mankind,  who  are  the  Parts  of 
this  System.  God,  indeed,  is  the  principal  Part ;  Men  the 
subordinate  :  A  benevolence  toward  both  includes  Piety 
and  Humanity,  that  is,  both  Tables  of  the  Law  of 
Nature.'  *  He  repeatedly  points  out  that  the  common 
good  includes  our  own,  as  one  of  its  parts  ;  but  it  must 
be  sought  only  as  a  part,  in  subordination  to  the  whole. 
Cumberland's  confidence  in  the  perfect  coincidence  of 
virtue,  or  benevolence,  and  individual  happiness  ultimately 
depends  upon  his  doctrine  of  the  divine  sanctions  of  the 
Laws  of  Nature.  But  his  main  interest  in  the  ethical 
question  is  to  insist,  against  Hobbes,  upon  the  *  naturalness ' 
of  the  law  of  benevolence  and  the  inherent  unreasonable- 
ness of  separating  the  individual  and  his  good  from  the 
system  of  rational  beings  of  which  he  is  in  reality  only  a 
part,  and  with  whose  good  his  own  is  inseparably  bound  up. 

»  Ch.  ii .  p.  165.  2  Ch.  V.  p.  189. 

'  Ch.  i.  *  Introd.,  sect.  xv.  p,  20. 


CHAPTER   IV 

LOCKE:   THE   PROBLEM   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

It  was  not  the  study  of  either  Bacon  or  Hobbes  that  first 
awakened  Locke's  interest  in  philosophy  or  determined 
the  direction  of  his  own  philosophical  development. 
Although  there  is  much  in  his  writings  which  we  can 
hardly  but  interpret  as  aimed  against  the  views  of  these 
thinkers,  there  is  practically  no  mention  of  them  in  his 
works.  As  an  undergraduate  at  Oxford,  he  was  compelled 
to  read  the  Scholastic  philosophy,  and  was  trained  in  the 
art  of  disputation  ;  and  his  entire  philosophical  activity  may 
be  regarded  as  a  protest  against  the  settlement  of  intellectual 
questions  by  verbal  disputation  and  submission  to  authority. 
Following  up  his  undergraduate  course  with  professional 
medical  study,  he  came  into  contact  with  the  Baconian 
spirit  of  experimental  investigation  which  was  already 
moving  the  life  of  the  University.  '  It  might  be  inter- 
esting,' says  Professor  Campbell  Fraser,  *  to  speculate  upon 
the  consequences  to  philosophy,  in  England  and  in  Europe, 
if  Locke  had  spent  his  academical  life  at  Cambridge  instead 
of  Oxford,  and  had  breathed  its  atmosphere  of  Platonism, 
instead  of  pursuing  physical  experiments  at  Oxford,  when 
Oxford  was  giving  birth  to  its  Royal  Society.'^  But 
while  we  must  trace  the  spirit  of  intellectual  freedom,  and 
the  faith  in  experience,  which  are  so  characteristic  of 
Locke,  to  the  influence,  negative  and  positive,  of  his 
academic  environment,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the 
real  influence  which  first  set  him  thinking  about  the 
problems  of  philosophy,  and  which  determined  the  specific 

*  Introd.  to  Essay^  p.  xxxiv. 

92 


LOCKE  93 

nature  of  his  own  problem,  was  the  early  study  of  the 
writings  of  Descartes.  This  influence  was  negative  rather 
than  positive.  The  confidence  of  Descartes  in  the  *  clear- 
ness and  distinctness '  of  our  ideas  as  a  criterion  of  truth 
tempted  him  and  his  successors  to  attempt  metaphysical 
construction  of  a  kind  which  roused  suspicion  in  Locke's 
more  cautious  English  mind,  and  forced  upon  him  the 
previous  question  of  the  validity  and  extent  of  the  know- 
ledge contained  in  such  clear  and  distinct  ideas. 

Locke's  real  affinity  is,  therefore,  rather  with  Bacon 
than  with  either  Hobbes  or  Descartes.  Like  Bacon,  he 
is  a  critic  of  human  knowledge,  a  surveyor  of  the  founda- 
tions rather  than  a  builder  of  the  structure  of  science  and 
philosophy.  He  contrasts  the  modesty  of  his  own  under- 
taking with  the  grander  designs  of  the  scientific  minds  of 
the  time.  *The  commonwealth  of  learning  is  not  at  this 
time  without  master-builders,  whose  mighty  designs,  in 
advancing  the  sciences,  will  leave  lasting  monuments  to 
the  admiration  of  posterity,  but  every  one  must  not  hope 
to  be  a  Boyle  or  a  Sydenham  ;  and  in  an  age  that  produces 
such  masters  as  the  great  Huygenius  and  the  incomparable 
Mr.  Newton,  with  some  others  of  that  strain,  it  is  ambi- 
tion enough  to  be  employed  as  an  under-labourer  in 
clearing  the  ground  a  little,  and  removing  some  of  the 
rubbish  that  lies  in  the  way  to  knowledge.'  ^  Like  Bacon, 
too,  Locke  is  primarily  interested  in  the  practical  utility 
of  knowledge.  *Our  business  here  is  not  to  know  all 
things,  but  those  which  concern  our  conduct.  ...  It  is 
of  great  use  to  the  sailor  to  know  the  length  of  his  line, 
though  he  cannot  with  it  fathom  all  the  depths  of  the 
ocean.  It  is  well  he  knows  that  it  is  long  enough  to 
reach  the  bottom,  at  such  places  as  are  necessary  to  direct 
his  voyage,  and  caution  him  against  running  upon  shoals 
that  may  ruin  him.'^  The  difference  between  Locke 
and  Bacon  is  that  while  Bacon  sought  to  formulate  the 
true  method  of  scientific  investigation,  Locke  is  concerned 
with  the  previous  question  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge 

^  Essay,  •  Epistle  to  the  Reader.'  '  Ibid, 


94  ENGLISH    PHILOSOPHERS    ^ 

itself;  how  far  it  extends,  and  where  the  line  must  be 
drawn  between  certain  knowledge  and  probable  opinion. 
While  Bacon  sought  to  formulate  the  methods  of  scientific 
knowledge,  or  to  construct  a  system  of  inductive  logic, 
Locke  comes,  in  the  end,  to  the  conclusion  that  no 
*  science  of  bodies,'  or  certain  knowledge  of  the  real  world, 
is  possible,  and  that  the  needs  of  practice  are  sufficiently 
met  by  the  probabilities  of  opinion,  or  belief. 

So  far  as  English  philosophy  is  concerned,  Locke  is  the 
first  to  state  the  problem  in  this  form  ;  his  is  the  first 
criticism  of  human  knowledge,  or  epistemology.^  His 
statement  of  the  problem  is  of  epoch-making  importance 
for  the  subsequent  development  of  philosophy  in  England 
and  on  the  Continent,  in  the  hands  especially  of  Hume 
and  Kant.  Locke  himself  seems  to  have  been  led  to  his 
statement  of  it  by  his  experience  of  the  difficulties  in 
which  the  discussion  of  moral  and  religious  questions 
involves  the  human  mind.  We  learn  from  his  common- 
place books  that  he  was  in  his  early  life  much  interested 
in  such  questions,  and  in  the  '  Epistle  to  the  Reader '  he 
tells  us  :  '  Were  it  fit  to  trouble  thee  with  the  history  of 
this  Essay,  I  should  tell  thee,  that  five  or  six  friends  meet- 
ing at  my  chamber,  and  discoursing  on  a  subject  very 
remote  from  this,  found  themselves  quickly  at  a  stand,  by 
the  difficulties  that  rose  on  every  side.  After  we  had 
awhile  puzzled  ourselves,  without  coming  any  nearer  a 
resolution  of  those  doubts  which  perplexed  us,  it  came 
into  my  thoughts  that  we  took  a  wrong  course ;  and 
that,  before  we  set  ourselves  upon  inquiries  of  that 
nature,  it  was  necessary  to  examine  our  own  abilities,  and 
see  what  objects  our  understandings  were,  or  were  not, 
fitted  to  deal  with.'  The  discovery  of  the  boundary  line 
that  separates  certainty  from  probability,  knowledge  from 
opinion,  will  guide  us  in  the  profitable  use  of  our  under- 
standings :  *  we  shall  then  use  our  understandings  right, 
when  we  entertain  all  objects  in  that  way  and  proportion 

^  Unless  Herbert  of  Cherbury's  De  Ventate  is  to  be  regarded  as  a 
critical  inquiry  into  the  relations  of  knowledge  and  reality,  as  Professor 
Sorley  urges  (Mind,  N.S.,  iii.  49 1  ff-)' 


LOCKE  95 

that  they  are  suited  to  our  faculties,  and  upon  those 
grounds  they  are  capable  of  being  proposed  to  us ;  and 
not  peremptorily  or  intemperately  require  demonstration, 
and  demand  certainty,  where  probability  only  is  to  be  had, 
and  which  is  sufficient  to  govern  all  our  concernments.'  ^ 
Of  the  practical  sufficiency  of  our  knowledge  Locke  never 
has  any  doubt.  'For  though  the  comprehension  of 
our  understandings  comes  exceedingly  short  of  the  vast 
extent  of  things,  yet  we  shall  have  cause  enough  to 
magnify  the  bountiful  Author  of  our  being  for  that 
portion  and  degree  of  knowledge  he  has  bestowed  on  us, 
so  far  above  all  the  rest  of  the  inhabitants  of  this  our 
mansion.  .  .  .  We  shall  not  have  much  reason  to  com- 
plain of  the  narrowness  of  our  minds,  if  we  will  but 
employ  them  about  what  may  be  of  use  to  us  ;  for  of 
that  they  are  very  capable.  And  it  will  be  an  unpardon- 
able, as  well  as  childish  peevishness,  if  we  undervalue  the 
advantages  of  our  knowledge,  and  neglect  to  improve  it 
to  the  ends  for  which  it  was  given  us,  because  there  are 
some  things  that  are  set  out  of  the  reach  of  it.  It  will  be 
no  excuse  to  an  idle  and  untoward  servant,  who  would  not 
attend  his  business  by  candle  light,  to  plead  that  he  had 
not  bright  sunshine.  The  Candle  that  is  set  up  in  us 
shines  bright  enough  for  all  our  purposes.'  ^ 

At  the  very  threshold  of  such  an  examination  of 
knowledge  and  opinion,  however,  Locke  is  met  by  the 
objection  that  there  is  a  part  of  human  knowledge  whose 
validity  is  beyond  question,  that  we  have  a  set  of  ideas 
which  are  not,  like  the  rest,  acquired,  but  '  innate,'  the 
immediate  and  indubitable  expression  of  reason  itself. 
'  When  men  have  found  some  general  propositions  that 
could  not  be  doubted  of  as  soon  as  understood,  it  was,  I 
know,  a  short  and  easy  way  to  conclude  them  innate.  This 
being  once  received,  it  eased  the  lazy  from  the  pains  of 
search,  and  stopped  the  inquiry  of  the  doubtful  concerning 
all  that  was  once  styled  innate.  And  it  was  of  no  small 
advantage    to    those    who   affected    to    be   masters    and 

^  Introd.,  sect.  5.  "  Loc.  cit. 


96 


ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 


teachers,  to  make  this  the  principle  of  principles — that 
principles  must  not  he  questioned^  ^  The  first  Book  of  the 
Essay  is  accordingly  devoted  to  the  refutation  of  the  doc- 
trine of  Innate  Ideas,  in  the  sense  just  explained,  or  to 
the  refutation  of  the  claim  of  any  elements  in  our  so- 
called  knowledge  to  exemption  from  the  criticism  which 
he  is  about  to  undertake.  All  the  parts  of  our  knowledge, 
he  insists,  have  the  same  rank  and  the  same  history. 
It  is  difficult  to  determine  against  whom  the  argument  is 
directed,  or  *  to  find  any  philosopher,  then  or  since,  who 
would  deny  what  Locke  maintains.'^  But  when  we  note 
Locke's  polemical  interest  in  the  question,  and  remember 
the  significance  for  him  of  the  empirical  origin  of  all  the 
elements  of  human  knowledge,  we  can  afford  to  disregard 
the  doubtful  relevancy  of  the  argument,  and  be  content 
to  see  in  it  an  earnest  protest  against  the  principle  of 
authority,  a  vindication  of  our  right  to  examine  critically 
all  the  so-called  *  principles '  of  human  knowledge. 

The   elements,  data,   or    materials  of  knowledge  are 
called  by  Locke  *  ideas,'  an  idea  being  defined  by  him  as 

*  whatsoever  is  the  object  of  the  understanding  when  a  man 
thinks.'  In  one  sense  at  least,  therefore,  the  measure  of  our 
knowledge  will  be  found  in  the  extent  and  clearness  of  our 
ideas.  What  we  actually  know,  we  must  have  an  idea  of: 
that  of  which  we  have  no  idea,  or  only  an  obscure  and 
inadequate  idea,  we  cannot  know,  or  can  know  only  inade- 
quately. The  limitation  of  our  knowledge  will  be  found 
in  the  limitation  of  our  ideas.  Hence  '  the  greater  part 
of  a  book  treating  of  the  understanding  will  be  taken  up 
in  considering  ideas.'  The  earlier  Books  of  the  Essay  are 
devoted    to    this   *  consideration '  of  ideas,  seeking,   in  a 

*  historical  plain  method,'  to  give  an  'account  of  the 
ways  whereby  our  understandings  come  to  attain  those 
notions  of  things  we  have ' ;  inquiring  into  *  the  original 
of  those  ideasy  notions,  or  whatever  else  you  please  to  call 
them,  which  a  man  observes,  and  is  conscious  to  himself 

^  I.  iii.  25.         ^  Fraser,  Locke,  in  'Philosophical  Classics,'  p.  117. 


LOCKE  97 

he  has  in  his  mind  ;  and  the  ways  whereby  the  under- 
standing comes  to  be  furnished  with  them,'  while  the 
investigation  of  the  question  'what  knowledge  the  under- 
standing hath  by  those  ideas,  and  the  certainty,  evidence, 
and  extent  of  it,'  as  well  as  M:he  nature  and  grounds  of 
faith  or  opinion^  whereby  I  mean  that  assent  which  we 
give  to  any  proposition  as  true,  ot  whose  truth  yet  we 
have  no  cercftlh  knowledge,'  is  reserved  for  the  fourth  Book. 
The  object  of  Lhe  second  JbJook,  irTTparticuIar,  is  to  give 
*a  short  and,  I  think,  true  history  of  the  first  beginnings  of 
human  knowledge ;  whence  the  mind  has  its  first  objects; 
and  by  what  steps  it  makes  its  progress  to  the  laying  in  and 
storing  up  those  ideas,  out  of  which  is  to  be  framed  all 
the  knowledge  it  is  capable  of.'  ^  *  Having  thus  given 
an  account  of  the  original,  sorts,  and  extent  of  our  ideas, 
with  several  other  considerations  about  these  (I  know  not 
whether  I  may  say)  instruments,  or  materials  of  our  know- 
ledge, the  method  I  at  first  proposed  to  myself,  would 
now  require  that  I  should  immediately  proceed  to  show 
what  use  the  understanding  makes  of  them,  and  what 
KNOWLEDGE  we  have  by  them.'  2 

In  proceeding  to  consider  Locke's  account  of  the  ways 
by  which  the  understanding  comes  to  be  furnished  with 
the  ideas  which  form  the  materials  of  all  its  knowledge,  it 
is  important  to  note  the  limitation  of  the  inquiry.  '  I 
shall  not  at  present  meddle,'  he  says,  '  with  the  physical 
consideration  of  the  mind  ;  or  trouble  myself  to  examine 
wherein  its  essence  consists  ;  or  by  what  motions  of  our 
spirits,  or  alterations  of  our  bodies,  we  come  to  have  any 
sensation  by  our  organs,  or  any  ideas  in  our  understandings  ; 
and  whether  those  ideas  do,  in  their  formation,  any  or  all 
of  them,  depend  on  matter  or  not.  These  are  speculations 
which,  however  curious  and  entertaining,  I  shall  decline  as 
lying  out  of  my  way  in  the  design  I  am  now  upon.  It 
shall  suffice  to  my  present  purpose,  to  consider  the  dis- 
cerning faculties  of  a  man,  as  they  are  employed  about 
the    objects   which    they    have    to   do    with.'^      Locke 

*  II.  xi.  15.        ^  II.  xxxiii.  19.        ^  Introd.,  sect.  2. 

G 


98  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

assumes  the  existence  of  external  things  on  the  one  hand, 
and  of  the  mind  on  the  other,  and  the  *  operation  '  of  the 
former  upon  the  latter.  How  motion  in  the  object  and  in 
the  sense-organ  can  produce  ideas  in  the  understanding,  he 
does  not  attempt  to  explain  ;  he  is  content  to  describe  the 
way  in  which  our  understandings  conceive  the  relation  in 
question,  to  accept  the  facts  as  they  report  themselves 
in  the  human  understanding.  Questions  of  physiological 
psychology  and  of  metaphysical  theory  are  equally  remote 
from  his  purpose,  at  least  in  the  second  Book,  where  he  is 
simply  giving  an  account  of  the  genesis  of  our  ideas  and, 
according  to  his  *  historical  plain  method,'  keeping  con- 
sistently within  the  limits  of  these  ideas  themselves.  What, 
he  virtually  asks,  are  our  ideas  in  their  simplest  form,  and 
what  do  these  ideas  tell  us  about  the  understanding  on 
the  one  hand  and  about  things  on  the  other  ?  The  ques- 
tion of  the  validity  or  invalidity  of  that  report — the  real 
question  of  the  Essay — is  reserved  for  the  fourth  Book. 

The  common  source  of  our  ideas  is  found  by  Locke  in 
experience,  in  one  or  other  of  its  two  forms,  sensation  and 
reflection,  or  external  and  internal  sense.  To  illustrate 
the  indebtedness  of  the  understanding  to  experience  for  its 
ideas,  he  uses  two  analogies  :  that  of  a  sheet  of  white 
paper,  and  that  of  a  dark  room.  '  Let  us  then  suppose  the 
mind  to  be,  as  we  say,  white  paper,  void  of  all  characters, 
without  any  ideas  ; — How  comes  it  to  be  furnished  ? 
Whence  comes  it  by  that  vast  store  which  the  busy  and 
boundless  fancy  of  man  has  painted  on  it  with  an  almost 
endless  variety  ?  Whence  has  it  all  the  materials  of  reason 
and  knowledge  ?  To  this  I  answer,  in  one  word,  from 
EXPERIENCE.  In  that  all  our  knowledge  is  founded  ; 
and  from  that  it  ultimately  derives  itself.  Our  observation, 
employed  either  about  external  sensible  objects,  or  about 
the  internal  operations  of  our  minds  perceived  and  re- 
flected on  by  ourselves,  is  that  which  supplies  our  under- 
standings with  all  the  materials  of  thinking.  These  two 
are  the  fountains  of  knowledge,  from  whence  all  the 
ideas    we    have,    or    can    naturally    have,    do    spring.'  ^ 

1  II.  i.  2. 


LOCKE  99 

*  External  and  internal  sensation  are  the  only  passages 
that  I  can  find  of  knowledge  to  the  understanding.  These 
alone,  as  far  as  I  can  discover,  are  the  windows  by  which 
light  is  let  into  this  dark  room.  For,  methinks,  the  under- 
standing is  not  much  unlike  a  closet  wholly  shut  from 
light,  with  only  some  little  openings  left,  to  let  in  external 
visible  resemblances,  or  ideas  of  things  without :  would 
the  pictures  coming  into  such  a  dark  room  but  stay  there, 
and  lie  so  orderly  as  to  be  found  upon  occasion,  it  would 
very  much  resemble  the  understanding  of  a  man,  in 
reference  to  all  objects  of  sight,  and  the  ideas  of  them.'  ^ 

Taking  these  two  sources  of  ideas  in  turn,  Locke  finds 
that  '  our  senses,  conversant  about  particular  sensible 
objects,  do  convey  into  the  mind  several  distinct  percep- 
tions of  things,  according  to  those  various  ways  wherein 
those  objects  do  affect  them.  And  thus  we  come  by 
those  ideas  we  have  of  yellow,  white,  heat,  cold,  soft,  hard, 
bitter,  sweet,  and  all  those  which  we  call  sensible  qualities  ; 
which  when  I  say  the  senses  convey  into  the  mind,  I 
mean,  they  from  external  objects  convey  into  the  mind 
what  produces  there  those  perceptions.  This  great  source 
of  most  of  the  ideas  we  have,  depending  wholly  upon 
our  senses,  and  derived  by  them  to  the  understanding,  I 
call  SENSATION.'  ^  <  Secondly,  the  other  fountain,  from 
which  experience  furnisheth  the  understanding  with  ideas, 
— is  the  perception  of  the  operations  of  our  own  mind 
within  us,  as  it  is  employed  about  the  ideas  it  has  got ; — 
which  operations,  when  the  soul  comes  to  reflect  on  and 
consider,  do  furnish  the  understanding  with  another  set  of 
ideas,  which  could  not  be  had  from  things  without.  And 
such  are  perception,  thinking,  doubting,  believing,  reasoning, 
knowing,  willing,  and  all  the  different  actings  of  our  own 
minds ; — which  we  being  conscious  of,  and  observing  in 
ourselves,  do  from  these  receive  into  our  understandings 
as  distinct  ideas  as  we  do  from  bodies  affecting  our  senses. 
This  source  of  ideas  every  man  has  wholly  in  himself; 
and  though  it  be  not  sense,  as  having  nothing  to  do  with 
external  objects,  yet  it  is  very  like  it,  and  might  properly 

1  II.  xi.  17.  2  II.  i.  3. 


loo         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

enough  be  called  internal  sense.  But  as  I  call  the  other 
Sensation,  so  I  call  this  reflection,  the  ideas  it  affords 
being  such  only  as  the  mind  gets  by  reflecting  on  its  own 
operations  within  itself.  By  reflection,  then,  ...  I  would 
be  understood  to  mean,  that  notice  which  the  mind  takes 
of  its  own  operations,  and  the  manner  of  them,  by  reason 
whereof  there  come  to  be  ideas  of  these  operations  in  the 
understanding.'  ^ 

It  is  to  the  consideration  of  the  ideas  of  sensation  that 
the  inquiry  is  chiefly  devoted.  The  simple  ideas  of 
reflection  are  divided  into  two  classes :  Perception,  or 
Thinking ;  and  Volition,  or  Willing,  and  referred  to 
the  two  *  powers,  abilities,  or  faculties,'  called  Under- 
standing (in  the  narrower  sense)  and  Will  respectively. 
The  account  of  the  simple  ideas  of  sensation  is  much 
more  complicated.  In  this  case  the  idea  is  always  the 
idea  of  a  quality,  which  is  referred  by  the  mind  to  a  thing. 
The  classification  of  the  ideas  is  therefore  based  upon  the 
distinction  between  the  two  kinds  of  qualities  of  which 
our  ideas  inform  us,  primary  and  secondary.  The  primary 
qualities  are  extension,  figure,  solidity,  motion  or  rest, 
and  number  ;  all  others  are  secondary.  The  former  are  also 
called  *real'  qualities,  since  they  actually  belong  to  the 
thing,  whether  it  is  perceived  or  not ;  while  the  secondary 
are  called  '  imputed '  qualities,  since  they  do  not  really 
belong  to  the  thing,  but  depend  for  their  reality  upon  our 
perception  of  them.  '  What  I  have  said  concerning 
colours  and  smells  may  be  understood  also  of  tastes  and 
sounds,  and  other  the  like  sensible  qualities ;  which, 
whatever  reality  we  by  mistake  attribute  to  them,  are  in 
truth  nothing  in  the  objects  themselves,  but  powers  to 
produce  various  sensations  in  us  ;  and  depend  on  those 
primary  qualities,  viz.  bulk,  figure,  texture,  and  motion 
of  parts.'  2  It  follows  that  the  ideas  of  the  primary 
qualities  resemble  these  qualities  as  they  really  exist  in  the 
object,  *and  their  patterns  do  really  exist  in  the  bodies 
themselves ' ;  while  in  the  case  of  the  secondary  qualities 

»  II.  i.  4.  2  II.  viii.  14. 


LOCKE  loi 

*  there  is  nothing  like  our  ideas,  existing  in  the  bodies 
themselves.  They  are,  in  the  bodies  we  denominate 
from  them,  only  a  power  to  produce  those  sensations  in 
us  ;  and  what  is  sweet,  blue,  or  warm  in  idea,  is  but  the 
certain  bulk,  figure,  and  motion  of  the  insensible  parts, 
in  the  bodies  themselves,  which  we  call  so.'^  The 
secondary  qualities,  while  they  are  the  product  of  the 
primary,  are  yet  dependent  upon  percipient  mind  for 
their  existence.  '  Take  away  the  sensation  of  them ; 
let  not  the  eyes  see  light  or  colours,  nor  the  ears  hear 
sounds ;  let  the  palate  not  taste,  nor  the  nose  smell,  and 
all  colours,  tastes,  odours,  and  sounds,  as  they  are  such 
particular  ideas^  vanish  and  cease,  and  are  reduced  to  their 
causes,  i.e.  bulk,  figure,  and  motion  of  parts.'  ^  So  far 
as  real  existence  goes,  that  is  to  say,  the  qualitative  is 
resolved  into  the  quantitative  aspect  of  things ;  the 
qualitative  aspect  proper  has  a  merely  subjective  or  mental 
existence.  The  distinction  had  been  already  made  by 
Bacon  and  Hobbes ;  but  it  is  made  by  Locke  in  a  new 
way,  which  immediately  suggests  the  characteristically 
modern  and  English  form  of  the  problem  of  external 
reality.  Locke's  statement  of  the  distinction  between 
the  primary  and  the  secondary  qualities  inevitably 
suggested  Berkeley's  further  question.  How  far  is  the 
reality  of  external  things  mind-dependent  ?  Is  the  dis- 
tinction, as  Locke  has  stated  it,  a  real  distinction  ? 

As  the  secondary  qualities  point  to  the  primary  for  their 
explanation,  so  the  primary  point  to  a  *  support '  or 
'substance'  in  which  they  inhere  and  from  which  they 
do  result.  'The  mind  being  .  .  .  furnished  with  a  great 
number  of  the  simple  ideas,  conveyed  in  by  the  senses 
as  they  are  found  in  exterior  things,  ...  takes  notice 
also  that  a  certain  number  of  these  ideas  go  constantly 
together ;  which  being  presumed  to  belong  to  one 
thing,  .  .  .  are  called,  so  united  in  one  subject,  by  one 
name ;  because,  .  .  .  not  imagining  how  these  simple 
ideas  can  subsist  by  themselves,  we  accustom  ourselves  to 

1  II.  viii.  1$.  a  II.  viii.  17. 


I02  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

suppose  some  substratum  wherein  they  do  subsist,  and  from 
which  they  do  result ;  which  therefore  we  call  substance. 
So  that  if  any  one  will  examine  himself  concerning  his 
notion  of  pure  substance  in  general,  he  will  find  he  has 
no  other  idea  of  it  at  all,  but  only  a  supposition  of  he 
knows  not  what  support  of  such  qualities  which  are  capable 
of  producing  simple  ideas  in  us ;  which  qualities  are 
commonly  called  accidents.  If  any  one  should  be  asked, 
what  is  the  subject  wherein  colour  or  weight  inheres, 
he  would  have  nothing  to  say,  but  the  solid  extended 
parts ;  and  if  he  were  demanded,  what  is  it  that 
solidity  and  extension  inhere  in,  he  would  not  be  in  a 
much  better  case  than  the  Indian  before  mentioned  who, 
saying  that  the  world  was  supported  by  a  great  elephant, 
was  asked  what  the  elephant  rested  on  ;  to  which  his 
answer  was,  a  great  tortoise  :  but  being  again  pressed 
to  know  what  gave  support  to  the  broad-backed  tortoise, 
replied — somethingy  he  knew  not  what.^  ^  The  *  obscure  and 
relative  idea  of  substance  in  general^  therefore,  is  '  nothing 
but  the  supposed,  but  unknown,  support  of  those  qualities 
we  find  existing.' 

This  idea  of  substance  in  general  lies  at  the  basis  of  our 
ideas  of  particular  substances,  which  we  acquire  'by  col- 
lecting such  combinations  of  simple  ideas  as  are,  by  ex- 
perience and  observation  of  men's  senses,  taken  notice  of 
to  exist  together  ;  and  are  therefore  supposed  to  flow  from 
the  particular  internal  constitution,  or  unknown  essence 
of  that  substance.'^  We  can  never  be  certain,  how- 
ever, that  we  have  discovered  the  real  collection  of  qualities 
which  constitutes  the  '  particular  substance '  in  question, 
for  two  reasons  :  first,  because  we  can  never  know  the 
'  general  substance  '  or  '  support '  of  the  primary  qualities  ; 
and,  secondly,  because  the  primary  qualities  themselves, 
upon  which  the  co-existence  of  the  secondary  qualities 
depends,  as  well  as  the  connexion  of  the  former  with  the 
latter  qualities,  remain  in  every  case  beyond  our  know- 
ledge.    The  first  of  these  reasons  has  been  sufficiently 

^  II.  xxiii.  I,  2.  ^  II.  xxiii.  3. 


LOCKE  103 

explained  ;  the  second  is  stated  in  the  account  of  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  *  real '  and  the  *  nominal '  essence  in 
Book  III.  The  former  is  'the  real  internal,  but  gener- 
ally (in  substances)  unknown  constitution  of  things, 
whereon  their  discoverable  qualities  depend  ; '  ^  the  latter 
is  *  the  artificial  constitution  of  genus  and  species.^  There 
must  be  some  real  constitution,  on  which  any  collec- 
tion of  simple  ideas  depends, — 'a  real,  but  unknown, 
constitution  of  their  insensible  parts ;  from  which  flow 
those  sensible  qualities  which  serve  us  to  distinguish  them 
from  one  another,  according  as  we  have  occasion  to  rank 
them  into  sorts,  under  common  denominations.'  ^  Our 
divisions  into  genera  and  species  are,  therefore,  artificial 
and,  so  far,  unreal ;  there  is  a  real  foundation  for  these 
distinctions  and  classifications,  but  we  do  not  know  it,  or 
know  it  only  imperfectly.  '  The  sorting  of  things  by  us, 
or  the  making  of  determinate  species,  being  in  order  to 
naming  and  comprehending  them  under  general  terms, 
I  cannot  see  how  it  can  be  properly  said,  that  Nature  sets 
the  boundaries  of  the  species  of  things  ;  or,  if  it  be  so,  our 
boundaries  of  species  are  not  exactly  conformable  to  those 
in  nature.  For  we,  having  need  of  general  names  for 
present  use,  stay  not  for  a  perfect  discovery  of  all  those 
qualities  which  would  best  show  us  their  most  material 
differences  and  agreements  ;  but  we  ourselves  divide  them, 
by  certain  obvious  appearances,  into  species.'  ^  Our  col- 
lection of  ideas  (the  nominal  essence)  is  not  identical  with 
the  real  collection  (the  real  essence).  If  we  knew  the 
inner  constitution  of  things,  our  idea  of  any  particular 
substance  '  would  be  as  far  different  from  what  it  now 
is,  as  is  his  who  knows  all  the  springs  and  wheels  and 
other  contrivances  within  of  the  famous  clock  at  Strasburg, 
from  that  which  a  gazing  countryman  has  of  it,  who 
barely  sees  the  motion  of  the  hand,  and  hears  the  clock 
strike,  and  observes  only  some  of  the  outward  appear- 
ances.' * 

Our  idea  of  spiritual  substance  is  of  precisely  the  same 

'  III.  Hi.  15.  2  in.  in.  17. 

=  III.  vi.  30.  *  III.  vi   3. 


I04         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

kind  as  that  of  material  substance — a  somethingy  different 
from  material  substance,  since  it  is  the  support  of  different 
qualities,  namely,  '  the  operations  of  the  mind,'  but  equally 
unknown.  So  entirely  ignorant  are  we  of  the  nature  of  • 
both  material  and  spiritual  substance  that  we  cannot  tell 
whether  they  are  really  the  same  or  different.  *  We  have 
the  ideas  of  matter  and  thinkings  but  possibly  shall  never 
be  able  to  know  whether  any  mere  material  being  thinks 
or  no  ;  it  being  impossible  for  us,  by  the  contemplation 
of  our  own  ideas,  without  revelation,  to  discover  whether 
Omnipotency  has  not  given  to  some  systems  of  matter, 
fitly  disposed,  a  power  to  perceive  and  think,  or  else  joined 
and  fixed  to  matter,  so  disposed,  a  thinking  immaterial 
substance  :  it  being,  in  respect  of  our  notions,  not  much 
more  remote  from  our  comprehension  to  conceive  that 
God  can,  if  he  pleases,  superadd  to  matter  a  faculty  of 
thinking^  than  that  he  should  superadd  to  it  another  substance 
with  a  faculty  of  thinking.''  ^ 

The  idea  of  cause  or  power  is,  like  that  of  substance, 
traced  by  Locke  to  experience.  We  get  it  both  from  our 
ideas  of  sensation  and  from  reflecting  on  what  passes 
within  the  mind  itself;  in  both  cases  we  observe  change 
and,  by  considering  the  possibility  of  change,  we  come  by 
the  idea  of  power.  He  thinks,  however,  that  we  get  a 
clearer  and  more  distinct  idea  of  active  power  from  reflec- 
tion on  the  operations  of  our  own  minds  than  from 
sensible  observation  of  bodies.  *  It  seems  to  me  we  have, 
from  the  observation  of  the  operation  of  bodies  by  our 
senses,  but  a  very  imperfect,  obscure  idea  of  active  power  ; 
since  they  afford  us  not  any  idea  in  themselves  of  the 
power  to  begin  any  action,  either  motion  or  thought.'  ^ 

The  '  crucial  instance '  of  Locke's  hypothesis  of  the 
empirical  origin  of  all  our  ideas  is  the  idea  of  Infinity. 
'  All  those  sublime  thoughts  which  tower  above  the  clouds, 
and  reach  as  high  as  heaven  itself,  take  their  rise  and 
footing  here  :  in  all  that  great  extent  wherein  the  mind 
wanders,   in   those   remote  speculations  it  may   seem  to 

»  IV.  iii,  6.  2  II,  xxi.  4. 


LOCKE  105 

be  elevated  with,  it  stirs  not  one  jot  beyond  those  ideas 
which  sense  or  reflection  have  offered  for  its  contemplation.'  ^ 
Anything  that  has  parts — space,  time,  or  number— is 
capable  of  enlargement  ad  infinitum.  While,  therefore, 
we  have  no  ideas  of  infinite  space,  time,  or  number,  we 
have  a  negative  idea  of  the  infinity  of  each  of  these.  The 
idea  of  infinity  arises  directly  from  the  experienced  fact  of 
the  absence  of  a  limit  to  the  possibilities  of  imagination  or 
thought  in  the  field  of  space,  time,  and  number.  We  thus 
obtain  a  *  confused  and  comparative  idea  that  this  is  not  all, 
but  we  may  yet  go  further.  ...  So  that  what  lies  beyond 
our  positive  idea  towards  infinity,  lies  in  obscurity,  and  has 
the  indeterminate  confusion  of  a  negative  idea.'^ 

Such  is  Locke's  account  of  the  empirical  origin  of  the 
ideas  which  constitute  the  materials  of  human  knowledge. 
We  must  now  look  at  his  account  of  human  knowledge 
itself,  its  extent  and  its  limits.  Though  he  holds  that  all 
our  knowledge  originates  in  experience,  Locke  is  not  an 
empiricist.  On  the  contrary,  he  recognises  a  rational 
element  in  all  knowledge,  properly  so  called.  Knowledge 
consists  in  the  perception  of  the  agreement  or  disagree- 
ment of  ideas,  and  such  perception  must  be  clear  or 
certain.  He  distinguishes  two  degrees  of  knowledge-  —in- 
tuition and  demonstration.  In  the  former  case,  the  agree- 
ment or  disagreement  is  immediately  perceived  ;  in  the 
latter,  it  is  perceived  through  the  mediation  of  a  third 
idea,  but  each  step  in  the  demonstration  is  itself  an  in- 
tuition, the  agreement  or  disagreement  between  the  two 
ideas  compared  being  immediately  perceived.  This  know- 
ledge, however,  extends  but  a  little  way  in  matters  of 
real  existence ;  it  comprises  only  two  certainties :  the 
existence  of  ourselves,  by  intuition,  and  that  of  God,  by 
demonstration. 

Locke  agrees  with  Descartes  that  the  existence  of  the 
self  is  implied  in  every  state  of  consciousness.  Every 
element  of  our  experience,  every  idea  of  which  we  are 

^  II,  i.  24.  2  II.  xvii.  15. 


io6  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

conscious,  is  a  certificate  of  our  own  existence,  as  the 
subject  of  that  experience,  the  self  that  is  conscious  of  that 
idea.  *As  for  our  own  existence^  we  perceive  it  so  plainly 
and  so  certainly,  that  it  neither  needs  nor  is  capable  of 
any  proof.  For  nothing  can  be  more  evident  to  us  than 
our  own  existence.  I  think,  I  reason,  I  feel  pleasure  and 
pain  :  dan  any  of  these  be  more  evident  to  me  than  my 
own  existence  ?  If  I  doubt  of  all  other  things,  that  very 
doubt  makes  me  perceive  my  own  existence,  and  will  not 
suffer  me  to  doubt  of  that.  For  if  I  know  I  feel  pain,  it 
is  evident  I  have  as  certain  perception  of  my  own  exis- 
tence, as  of  the  pain  I  feel :  or  if  I  know  I  doubt,  I  have 
as  certain  perception  of  the  existence  of  the  thing  doubting, 
as  of  that  thought  which  I  call  doubt.  ...  In  every  act  of 
sensation,  reasoning,  or  thinking,  we  are  conscious  to  our- 
selves of  our  own  being  ;  and,  in  this  matter,  come  not 
short  of  the  highest  degree  of  certainty.'  ^ 

From  the  certainty  of  our  own  existence  that  of  the 
existence  of  God  immediately  follows.  This  is,  according 
to  Locke,  '  the  most  obvious  truth  that  reason  discovers '  ; 
its  evidence  is  *  equal  to  mathematical  certainty.'  Man 
knows  intuitively  that  he  is  *  something  that  actually  exists.'' 
*■  In  the  next  place,  man  knows,  by  an  intuitive  certainty, 
that  bare  nothing  can  no  more  produce  any  real  beings  than  it 
can  be  equal  to  two  right  angles.''  It  is,  therefore,  *an 
evident  demonstration,  that  from  eternity  there  has  been 
something.''  And  since  all  the  powers  of  all  beings  must 
be  traced  to  this  eternal  Being,  it  follows  that  it  is  the 
most  powerful,  as  well  as  the  most  knowing,  that  is,  God. 
Eternal  Mind  alone  can  produce  *  thinking,  perceiving 
beings,  such  as  we  find  ourselves  to  be.'  ^ 

Below  the  rank  of  knowledge  proper,  intuitive  and 
demonstrative,  Locke  recognises  a  third  degree  of  know- 
ledge, not  strictly  entitled  to  the  name — our  sensitive 
apprehension  of  external  things,  or  of  real  objects  other 
than  ourselves  and  God.  'These  two,  viz.  intuition 
and    demonstration,  are    the    degrees   of  our   knowledge ; 

1  IV.  ix.  3.  2  IV.  X. 


LOCKE  107 

whatever  comes  short  of  one  of  these,  with  what 
assurance  soever  embraced,  is  but  faith  or  opinion^  but 
not  knowledge,  at  least  in  all  general  truths.  There  is, 
indeed,  another  perception  of  the  mind,  employed  about 
the  particular  existence  of  finite  beings  without  uSy  which, 
going  beyond  bare  probability,  and  yet  not  reaching 
perfectly  to  either  of  the  foregoing  degrees  of  certainty, 
passes  under  the  name  of  knowledge.  There  can  be  nothing 
more  certain  than  that  the  idea  we  receive  from  an 
external  object  is  in  our  minds  :  this  is  intuitive  knowledge. 
But  whether  there  be  anything  more  than  barely  that 
idea  in  our  minds ;  whether  we  can  thence  certainly 
infer  the  existence  of  anything  without  us,  which  corre- 
sponds to  that  idea,  is  that  whereof  some  men  think  there 
may  be  a  question  made  ;  because  men  may  have  such 
ideas  in  their  minds,  when  no  such  thing  exists,  no  such 
object  affects  their  senses.'  ^  The  difficulty  is  put  elsewhere 
in  a  more  philosophical  form  :  '  It  is  evident  the  mind 
knows  not  things  immediately,  but  only  by  the  inter- 
vention of  the  ideas  it  has  of  them.  Our  knowledge, 
therefore,  is  real,  only  so  far  as  there  is  a  conformity 
between  our  ideas  and  the  reality  of  things.  But  what 
shall  be  here  the  criterion  ?  How  shall  the  mind,  when  it 
perceives  nothing  but  its  own  ideas,  know  that  they  agree 
with  things  themselves  ? '  ^  Does  not  the  very  definition 
of  knowledge,  as  the  perception  of  the  agreement  or  dis- 
agreement of  ideas  with  one  another,  preclude  the  percep- 
tion of  the  agreement  of  ideas  with  non-ideal  reality  ? 

Locke's  argument  for  the  objective  validity  of  sensitive 
knowledge  consists  of  several  considerations.  In  the  first 
place,  he  urges,  our  ideas  of  sensation  differ  from  those  of 
memory  and  imagination,  that  is  from  mere  ideas,  in  being 
produced  in  us  without  any  action  of  our  own,  and  there- 
fore '  must  necessarily  be  the  product  of  things  operating 
on  the  mind,  in  a  natural  way,  and  producing  therein 
those  perceptions  which  by  the  Wisdom  and  Will  of  our 
Maker  they  are  ordained  and  adapted  to.'     They  *  carry 

1  IV.  ii.  14.  ^  IV.  iv.  3. 


io8  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

with  them  all  the  conformity  which  is  intended  ;  or  which 
our  state  requires  :  for  they  represent  to  us  things  under 
those  appearances  which  they  are  fitted  to  produce  in  us  : 
whereby  we  are  enabled  to  distinguish  the  sorts  of  par- 
ticular substances,  to  discern  the  states  they  are  in,  and 
so  to  take  them  for  our  necessities,  and  apply  them  to 
our  uses.'  ^  Secondly,  pleasure  or  pain  often  accompanies 
the  sensation,  and  is  absent  from  the  idea  as  it  recurs  in 
memory  or  imagination  ;  and  *  this  certainty  is  as  great  as 
our  happiness  or  misery,  beyond  which  we  have  no  con- 
cernment to  know  or  to  be.'  2  Thirdly,  our  several  senses 
assist  one  another's  testimony,  and  thus  enable  us  to 
predict  our  sensational  experience.  On  these  grounds 
Locke  concludes  that  '  the  certainty  of  things  existing 
in  rerum  natura  when  we  have  the  testimony  of  our 
senses  for  it  is  not  only  aS  great  as  our  frame  can  attain 
to,  but  as  our  condition  needs.  For,  our  faculties  being 
suited  not  to  the  full  extent  of  being,  nor  to  a  perfect, 
clear,  comprehensive  knowledge  of  things  free  from  all 
doubt  and  scruple  ;  but  to  the  preservation  of  us,  in  whom 
they  are  ;  and  accommodated  to  the  use  of  life  :  they  serve 
to  our  purpose  well  enough,  if  they  will  but  give  us  certain 
notice  of  those  things,  which  are  convenient  or  incon- 
venient to  us.'  ^  The  certainty  which  Locke  attributes  to 
sensitive  knowledge  is  thus  seen  to  be  practical,  rather  than 
theoretical ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  distinguish  this  degree 
of  knowledge  from  the  belief  or  opinion  which  results 
from  a  balance  of  probabilities  rather  than  from  certain 
perception. 

But  even  granting  that  our  sensitive  apprehension  of 
external  reality  possesses  the  certainty  which  is  the  charac- 
teristic of  knowledge,  as  distinguished  from  mere  opinion, 
we  must  observe  within  how  very  narrow  limits  it  is  con- 
fined. *When  our  senses  do  actually  convey  into  our 
understandings  any  idea,  we  cannot  but  be  satisfied  that 
there  doth  something  at  that  time  really  exist  without  us, 
which  doth  aflFect  our  senses,  and  by  them  give  notice  of 

1  IV.  iv.  4.  2  IV.  ii.  14.  '  IV.  xi.  8. 


LOCKE  109 

itself  to  our  apprehensive  faculties,  and  actually  produce 
that  idea  which  we  then  perceive  :  and  we  cannot  so  far 
distrust  their  testimony,  as  to  doubt  that  such  collections  of 
simple  ideas  as  we  have  observed  by  our  senses  to  be 
united  together,  do  really  exist  together.  But  this  know- 
ledge extends  as  far  as  the  present  testimony  of  our  senses, 
employed  about  particular  objects  that  do  then  effect 
them,  and  no  further.'  ^  We  cannot  demonstrate  the 
necessity  of  the  co-existence»of  those  ideas  which  constitute 
the  modes  or  qualities  of  substances  ;  we  cannot  perceive 
their  *  necessary  connexion  or  repugnancy.'  The  connexion 
between  the  secondary  and  the  primary  qualities  remains 
inscrutable.  *  And  therefore  there  are  very  few  general 
propositions  to  be  made  concerning  substances,  which 
carry  with  them  undoubted  certainty.' ^  'Our  know- 
ledge in  all  these  inquiries  reaches  very  little  further 
than  our  experience.'  ^  Beyond  the  strict  warrant 
of  experience,  or  the  testimony  of  our  senses,  we  may 
venture  upon  *  opinion'  or  'judgment'  as  to  the  co- 
existence of  the  qualities  of  substances,  but  we  cannot 
strictly  '  know.'  '  Possibly  inquisitive  and  observing  men 
may,  by  strength  of  judgment,  penetrate  further,  and,  on 
probabilities  taken  from  wary  observation,  and  hints  well 
laid  together,  often  guess  right  at  what  experience  has  not 
yet  discovered  to  them.  But  this  is  but  guessing  still ;  it 
amounts  only  to  opinion,  and  has  not  that  certainty  which 
is  requisite  to  knowledge.'  * 

Locke  finds  himself  compelled,  therefore,  to  conclude 
that  the  so-called  'science'  of  which  Bacon  had  talked  so 
proudly,  and  of  whose  achievements  he  had  himself 
spoken  so  respectfully  in  the  opening  pages  of  the 
Essayy  is  not,  in  the  strict  sense,  science  at  all ;  that, 
in  his  own  words,  there  can  be  'no  science  of  bodies.' 
It  is  vain  to  search  for  the  '  forms '  of  the  various 
material  substances,  or  to  seek  to  verify  '  the  corpuscularian 
hypothesis '  as  to  the  connexion  of  the  primary  and  the 
secondary  qualities  of  things.    '  I  am  apt  to  doubt  that,  how 

,  1  IV.  xi.  9.  «  IV.  vi.  7. 

'  IV.  iii.  13,  14.  *  IV.  vi.  13. 


no         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

far  soever  human  industry  may  advance  useful  and  ex- 
perimental philosophy  in  physical  things,  scientifical  will 
still  be  out  of  our  reach.  .  .  .  Certainty  and  demonstration 
are  things  w^e  must  not,  in  these  matters,  pretend  to.'  ^ 

*  And  therefore  we  shall  do  no  injury  to  our  knowledge, 
when  we  modestly  think  with  ourselves,  that  we  are  so 
far  from  being  able  to  comprehend  the  whole  nature  of 
the  universe,  and  all  things  contained  in  it,  that  we  are 
not  capable  of  a  philosophical  knowledge  of  the  bodies  that 
are  about  us,  and  make  a  part  of  us  :  concerning  their 
secondary  qualities,  powers,  and  operations,  we  can  have 
no  universal  certainty.  ...  In  these  we  can  go  no  further 
than  particular  experience  informs  us  of  matter  of  faCt,  and 
by  analogy  to  guess  what  effects  the  like  bodies  are,  upon 
other  trials,  like  to  produce.  But  as  to  a  perfect  science  oi 
natural  bodies,  (not  to  mention  spiritual  beings),  we  are,  I 
think,  so  far  from  being  capable  of  any  such  thing,  that 
I    conclude    it   lost   labour  to   seek   after    it.' 2     In    that 

*  experience  and  history'  to  which  Bacon  had  looked  as 
merely  the  preparation  for  scientific  insight  into  the  *  forms ' 
of  things,  and  which  Hobbes  had  still  more  disparaged, 
Locke  accordingly  sees  the  only  legitimate  occupation  of 
physical  inquiry.  *This  way  of  getting  and  improving 
our  knowledge  in  substances  only  by  experience  and  history^ 
which  is  all  that  the  weakness  of  our  faculties  in  this 
state  of  mediocrity  which  we  are  in  in  this  world  can 
attain  to,  makes  me  suspect  that  natural  philosophy  is  not 
capable  of  being  made  a  science.  We  are  able,  I  imagine, 
to  reach  very  little  general  knowledge  concerning  the 
species  of  bodies,  and  their  several  properties.  Experi- 
ments and  historical  observations  we  may  have,  from 
which  we  may  draw  advantages  of  ease  and  health,  and 
thereby  increase  our  stock  of  conveniences  for  this  life  ; 
but  beyond  this  I  fear  our  talents  reach  not,  nor  are  our 
faculties,  as  I  guess,  able  to  advance.'  ^ 

If  we  cannot  attain  to  a  science  of  bodies,  still  less  can 
we  expect  *  scientifical '  understanding  of  spirits.    Spiritual 

^  IV.  ui.  2d.  «  IV.  uL  29.  »  IV.  xii.  10. 


LOCKE  1 1 1 

substance  is,  as  we  have  seen,  as  unknown  as  material 
substance  ;  and  Locke  finds  additional  reasons  for  limiting 
our  knowledge  in  this  sphere.  *  If  we  are  at  a  loss  in 
respect  qf  the  powers  and  operations  of  bodies,  I  think  it 
is  easy  to  conclude  we  are  much  more  in  the  dark  in 
reference  to  spirits  ;  whereof  we  naturally  have  no  ideas 
but  what  we  draw  from  that  of  our  own,  by  reflecting  on 
the  operations  of  our  own  souls  within  us,  as  far  as  they 
come  within  our  observation.  But  how  inconsiderable  a 
rank  the  spirits  that  inhabit  our  bodies  hold  amongst 
those  various  and  possibly  innumerable  kinds  of  nobler 
beings ;  and  how  far  short  they  come  of  the  endow- 
ments and  perfections  of  cherubim  and  seraphim,  and 
infinite  sorts  of  spirits  above  us,  is  what  by  a  tran- 
sient hint  in  another  place  I  have  offered  to  my  reader's 
consideration.'  ^ 

Our  knowledge  of  *  sensible  matters  of  facts,'  or  of  the 
coexistence  of  the  ideas  which  represent  the  qualities  of 
substances,  being  thus  confined  to  the  particulars  of  ex- 
perience, we  must  look  elsewhere  for  that  knowledge 
which  is  at  once  general  and  real.  It  is  found  in  those 
complex  ideas  other  than  those  of  substances,  which, 
*  being  archetypes  of  the  mind's,  own  making,  not  in- 
tended to  be  the  copies  of  anything,  nor  referred  to  the 
existence  of  anything,  as  to  their  originals,  cannot  want 
any  conformity  necessary  to  real  knowledge.'  ^  Here  we 
have  to  do  not  with  the  relations  of  ideas  to  reality  or  to 
matters  of  fact,  but  simply  with  the  relations  of  ideas  to 
one  another.  Of  this  kind  of  knowledge  Locke  regards 
mathematics  as  the  type.  *  I  doubt  not  but  it  will  be 
easily  granted  that  the  knowledge  we  have  of  mathe- 
matical truths  is  not  only  certain,  but  real  knowledge  ;  and 
not  the  bare  empty  vision  of  vain,  insignificant  chimeras 
of  the  brain  :  and  yet,  if  we  will  consider,  we  shall  find 
that  it  is  only  of  our  own  ideas.'  ^  It  is  with  ideal 
figures  and  quantities,  not  with  actual  things,  that  the 

1  IV.  iii.  17.  ^  IV.  iv.  5.  »  IV.  iv.  6. 


112         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

mathematician  is  concerned.  Locke  holds,  however,  that 
such  general,  yet  certain  knowledge  is  found  in  all  similar 
relations  of  ideas,  in  all  similarly  ideal  sciences,  and  more 
particularly,  in  ethics,  *  our  moral  ideas,  as  well  as  mathe- 
matical, being  archetypes  themselves,  and  so  adequate 
and  complete  ideas.' ^  *The  idea  of  a  supreme  Being, 
infinite  in  power,  goodness,  and  wisdom,  whose  work- 
manship we  are,  and  on  whom  we  depend ;  and  the 
idea  of  ourselves,  as  understanding,  rational  creatures, 
being  such  as  are  clear  in  us,  would,  I  suppose,  if  duly 
considered  and  pursued,  afford  such  foundations  of  our 
duty  and  rules  of  action  as  might  place  morality  amongst 
the  sciences  capable  of  demonstration  :  wherein  I  doubt  not 
but  from  self-evident  propositions,  by  necessary  con- 
sequences, as  incontestable  as  those  in  mathematics,  the 
measures  of  right  and  wrong  might  be  made  out  to  any 
one  that  will  apply  himself  with  the  same  indifferency 
and  attention  to  the  one  as  he  does  to  the  other  of  these 


sciences 


'  2 


The  Essay  closes,  as  it  began,  with  the  note  of  the 
practical  and  the  useful.  The  sharp  limitation  of  human 
knowledge  should  teach  the  lesson  of  contentment  with 
probability,  where  certainty  is  unattainable.  'The 
understanding  faculties  being  given  to  man,  not  barely  for 
speculation,  but  also  for  the  conduct  of  his  life,  man  would 
be  at  a  great  loss  if  he  had  nothing  to  direct  him  but 
what  has  the  certainty  of  true  knowledge.  For  that  being 
very  short  and  scanty,  as  we  have  seen,  he  would  be  often  \, 
utterly  in  the  dark,  and  in  most  of  the  actions  of  his  life 
perfectly  at  a  stand,  had  he  nothing  to  guide  him  in  the 
absence  of  clear  and  certain  knowledge.  He  that  will 
not  eat  till  he  has  demonstration  that  it  will  nourish  him  ; 
he  that  will  not  stir  till  he  infallibly  knows  that  the 
business  he  goes  about  will  succeed,  will  have  little  else  to 
do  but  to  sit  still  and  perish.  Therefore,  as  God  has  set 
some  things  in  broad  daylight ;  as  he  has  given  us  some 

»  IV.  iv.  7.  »  IV.  iii.  18. 


LOCKE  .113 

certain  knowledge,  though  hmited  to  a  few  things  in 
comparison,  probably  as  a  taste  of  what  intellectual 
creatures  are  capable  of,  to  excite  in  us  a  desire  and 
endeavour  after  a  better  state  :  so,  in  the  greatest  part  of 
our  concernments,  he  has  afforded  us  only  the  twilight, 
as  I  may  so  say,  of  probability  ;  suitable,  I  presume,  to 
that  state  of  mediocrity  and  probationership  he  has  been 
pleased  to  place  us  in  here  ;  wherein,  to  check  our  over- 
confidence  and  presumption,  we  might,  by  every  day's 
experience,  be  made  sensible  of  our  short-sightedness  and 
liableness  to  error  ;  the  sense  whereof  might  be  a  constant 
admonition  to  us,  to  spend  the  days  of  this  our  pilgrimage 
with  industry  and  care,  in  the  searching  and  following 
of  that  way  which  might  lead  us  to  a  state  of  greater  per- 
fection. It  being  highly  rational  to  think,  even  were 
revelation  silent  in  the  case,  that,  as  men  employ  those 
talents  God  has  given  them  here,  they  shall  accordingly 
receive  their  rewards  at  the  close  of  the  day,  when  their 
sun  shall  set,  and  night  shall  put  an  end  to  their 
labours.'  ^ 

The  closing  chapters  of  Book  IV.  are  accordingly 
devoted  to  a  consideration  of  that  kind  of  apprehension 
of  reality  which  Locke  calls  *  judgment,'  as  distinguished 
from  'knowledge.'  'The  faculty  which  God  has  given 
man  to  supply  the  want  of  clear  and  certain  knowledge, 
in  cases  where  that  cannot  be  had,  is  judgment :  whereby 
the  mind  takes  its  ideas  to  agree  or  disagree  ;  or,  which  is 
the  same,  any  proposition  to  be  true  or  false,  without  per- 
ceiving a  demonstrative  evidence  in  the  proofs.'  ^  So-called 
'  scientific '  truths  being  generally  of  this  kind,  as  we 
have  seen,  one  would  have  expected  Locke  to  give  here 
some  account  of  the  procedure  of  inductive  science,  some 
directions  for  the  careful  and  methodical  study  of  the 
facts,  and  cautions  against  the  temptations  to  hasty  and 
unwarranted  generalisation,  such  as  we  find  in  Bacon's 
Novum  Organum.  But  instead  of  this,  he  contents  himself 
with  general  observations  on  the  degrees  of  assent,  on 

^  IV.  xiv.  1,2.  »  IV.  xiv.  3. 

H 


114  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

reason  (and  syllogism),  on  faith  and  reason,  on  'enthu- 
siasm,' and  on  wrong  assent,  or  error.  The  treatment 
of  Judgment,  that  is  to  say,  is  limited  to  general  consider- 
ations regarding  the  function  of  faith  and  the  relations 
of  faith  and  reason  as  guides  of  the  human  mind. 

What  is  specially  significant  here  is  Locke's  refusal  to 
oppose  faith  and  reason  in  the  fashion  of  Bacon  and 
Hobbes,  his  refusal  to  accept  any  authority  which  cannot 
vindicate  itself  at  the  bar  of  reason.  Even  in  his  in- 
sistence upon  the  necessity  of  supplementing  our  know- 
ledge by  faith,  Locke  remains  a  rationalist.  *  Faith  is 
nothing  but  a  firm  assent  of  the  mind  :  which,  if  it  be 
regulated,  as  is  our  duty,  cannot  be  afforded  to  anything 
but  upon  good  reason  ;  and  so  cannot  be  opposite  to  it. 
He  that  believes  without  having  any  reason  for  believing, 
may  be  in  love  with  his  own  fancies  ;  but  neither  seeks 
truth  as  he  ought,  nor  pays  the  obedience  due  to  his 
Maker,  who  would  have  him  use  those  discerning  faculties 
he  has  given  him,  to  keep  him  out  of  mistake  and 
error.  .  .  .  He  governs  his  assent  right,  and  places  it 
as  he  should,  who,  in  any  case  or  matter  whatsoever, 
believes  or  disbelieves  according  as  reason  directs  him. 
He  that  doth  otherwise,  transgresses  against  his  own  light, 
and  misuses  those  faculties  which  were  given  him  to  no 
other  end,  but  to  search  and  follow  the  clearer  evidence 
and  greater  probability.'  ^  Locke  is  at  one  with  the 
rationalist  theologians  of  his  century  in  their  antagonism 
to  an  '  enthusiasm '  which  would  substitute  for  the  insight 
of  reason  and  of  rational  faith  the  so-called  '  revelation ' 
of  private  experience.  He  speaks  of  *ff  third  ground  of 
assent^  which  with  some  men  has  the  same  authority,  and 
is  as  confidently  relied  on  as  either  faith  or  reason  ;  I 
mean  enthusiasm  :  which,  laying  by  reason,  would  set  up 
revelation  without  it.  Whereby  in  effect  it  takes  away 
both  reason  and  revelation,  and  substitutes  in  the  room 
of  them  the  ungrounded  fancies  of  a  man's  own  brain, 
and  assumes  them  for  a  foundation  both  of  opinion  and 

*  IV.  xvii.  24. 


LOCKE  115 

conduct.' 1  As  against  such  a  view,  he  insists  upon 
the  necessity  of  judging  revelation  by  reason.  '  He, 
therefore,  that  will  not  give  himself  up  to  all  the  extrava- 
gances of  delusion  and  error  must  bring  this  guide  of  his 
light  within  to  the  trial.  God  when  he  makes  the  prophet 
does  not  unmake  the  man.  He  leaves  all  his  faculties 
in  the  natural  state,  to  enable  him  to  judge  of  his  inspira- 
tions, whether  they  be  of  divine  original  or  no.  When 
he  illuminates  the  mind  with  supernatural  light,  he  does 
not  extinguish  that  which  is  natural.  If  he  would  have 
us  assent  to  the  truth  of  any  proposition,  he  either  evi- 
dences that  truth  by  the  usual  methods  of  natural  reason, 
or  else  makes  it  known  to  be  a  truth  which  he  would 
have  us  assent  to  by  his  authority,  and  convinces  us  that 
it  is  from  him,  by  some  marks  which  reason  cannot  be 
mistaken  in.  Reason  must  be  our  last  judge  and  guide  in 
everything.''  ^ 

Yet  reason  clearly  limits  the  field  of  its  own  insight ; 
it  is  only  reasonable  to  believe  where  we  cannot  know 
and  yet  must  act.  We  have  seen  that  it  was  the  *  difficulties 
concerning  morality  and  revealed  religion '  that  were  the 
occasion  of  the  mquiry  concerning  human  understanding. 
The  result  of  that  inquiry  is  that  the  human  under- 
standing is  not  commensurate  with  reality,  that  our  line 
is  too  short  to  sound  the  depths  of  the  vast  ocean  of  being, 
that  the  interests  of  morality  and  religion  cannot  be  com- 
passed by  the  reason  of  man,  and  that  knowledge  must  be 
supplemented  by  faith  if  man  is  to  fulfil  his  divine  destiny. 
This  is  the  point  of  view,  not  only  of  the  closing  chapters 
of  the  Essayy  but  of  the  treatise  on  the  Reasonableness  of 
Christianity,  published  five  years  later.  The  aim  of  this 
treatise  was  to  recall  men  from  the  contentions  of  the 
theological  schools  to  the  simplicity  of  the  gospel  as  the 
rule  of  human  life.  *The  writers  and  wranglers  in 
religion  fill  it  with  niceties,  and  dress  it  up  with  notions, 
which  they  make  necessary  and  fundamental  parts  of  it  ; 
as  if  there  were  no  way  into  the  church,  but  through  the 

1  IV.  xix.  3.  «  IV.  xix.  14. 


ii6  ENGLISH    PHILOSOPHERS 

academy  or  lyceum.  The  greatest  part  of  mankind  have 
not  leisure  for  learning  and  logic,  and  superfine  distinctions 
of  the  schools.' 1  What  men  need  is  not  intellectual 
insight  or  theological  dogma,  but  practical  guidance.  Locke 
seems  less  confident  than  he  was  in  the  Essay  of  the 
possibility  of  a  rational  science  of  morals.  *It  should 
seem,  by  the  little  that  has  hitherto  been  done  in  it,  that 
it  is  too  hard  a  task  for  unassisted  reason  to  establish 
morality,  in  all  its  parts,  upon  its  true  foundation,  with  a 
clear  and  convincing  light.  ...  It  is  plain,  in  fact,  that 
human  reason  unassisted  failed  men  in  its  great  and  proper 
business  of  morality.  It  never  from  unquestionable 
principles,  by  clear  deductions,  made  out  an  entire  body  of 
the  "  law  of  nature."  And  he  that  shall  collect  all  the 
moral  rules  of  the  philosophers,  and  compare  them  with 
those  contained  in  the  new  testament,  will  find  them  to 
come  short  of  the  morality  delivered  by  our  Saviour,  and 
taught  by  his  apostles ;  a  college  made  up,  for  the  most 
part,  of  ignorant,  but  inspired  fishermen.' ^ 

Though  Locke  never  himself  attempted  the  construction 
of  such  a  rational  science  of  ethics  as  he  had  foreshadowed 
in  the  Essay,  he  did,  in  the  second  of  the  two  Treatises  of 
Government,  attempt  the  formulation  of  a  theory  of 
political  obligation.  The  immediate  object  of  these  political 
treatises  was  to  disprove  the  theory  of  the  divine  and 
absolute  right  of  the  Monarch,  as  it  had  been  formulated 
in  Filmer's  Patriarcha,  and  to  establish  on  theoretical 
grounds  the  righteousness  of  the  Revolution  ;  '  to  establish 
the  throne  of  our  great  restorer,  our  present  king 
William  ;  to  make  good  his  title  in  the  consent  of  the 
people  .  .  .  and  to  justify  to  the  world  the  people  of 
England,  whose  love  of  their  just  and  natural  rights,  with 
their  resolution  to  preserve  them,  saved  the  nation  when 
it  was  on  the  very  brink  of  slavery  and  ruin.'  ^  In 
showing,  in  the  second  of  these  treatises, '  the  true  original, 
extent,  and  end  of  civil    government,'    Locke   bases  his 

*  Works,  8th  ed.,  iii.  98,  99.  ^  Works,  iii.  87,  88. 

^  Preface. 


LOCKE  117 

argument,  in  the  main,  upon  the  principles  already  in- 
sisted upon  by  Hooker  in  his  Laws  of  Ecclesiastical  Polityy 
and  his  appeal  is  always  to  the  'just  and  natural  rights' 
which  are  presupposed  in  civil  society  and  which  it  is  the 
function  of  government  to  defend  from  encroachment. 
For  Locke,  as  for  Hooker,  the  fundamental  laws  of  the 
political  society  are  the  expression  of  those '  laws  of  nature ' 
which  antedate  the  State  and  its  legislation.  '  The  law  of 
nature  stands  as  an  eternal  rule  to  all  men,  legislators  as 
well  as  others.'  ^  Holding  that  men  are  *  by  nature,  all 
free,  equal,  and  independent,^  and  that  'the  power  of 
the  society,  or  legislative  constituted  by  them,  can  never 
be  supposed  to  extend  further  than  the  common  good,'  ^ 
Locke,  like  Hobbes,  finds  the  origin  of  the  State  in  a 
contract.  He  distinguishes,  however,  the  act  by  which 
political  society  is  constituted  from  the  act  by  which 
the  '  legislative '  or  government  is  established.  '  The 
legislative '  is  only  the  representative  of  the  people, 
and  is  responsible  to  the  people  whom  it  represents  for 
the  faithful  discharge  of  the  trust  committed  to  it. 
Government  is  'a  trust  that  is  put  in  them  by  the  society 
and  the  law  of  God  and  nature.'  *  '  The  legislative  being 
only  a  fiduciary  power  to  act  for  certain  ends,  there 
remains  still  "  in  the  people  the  supreme  power  to  remove 
or  alter  the  legislative,"  when  they  find  the  legislative 
act  contrary  to  the  trust  reposed  in  them.'  ^  The  exercise 
of  this  supreme  power  directly  by  the  people  itself  implies 
the  dissolution  of  government ;  it  means,  in  other  words, 
revolution.  The  supreme  power,  at  such  a  crisis,  *  reverts 
to  the  society,  and  the  people  have  a  right  to  act  as  supreme, 
and  continue  the  legislative  in  themselves ;  or  erect  a 
new  form,  or  under  the  old  form  place  it  in  new  hands, 
as  they  think  good.'  ^  To  the  hard  question,  '  Who  shall 
be  judge,  whether  the  prince  or  legislative  act  contrary 
to  their  trust  ? '  Locke  boldly  replies  :  '  The  people  shall 
be  judge  ;  for  who  shall  judge  whether  his  trustee  or 

^  Sect,  35.  '  Sect.  95. 

3  Sect.  131.  *  Sect.  142. 

*  Sect.  149.  •  Sect.  243. 


ii8         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

deputy  acts  well,  and  according  to  the  trust  reposed  in 
him,  but  he  who  deputes  him,  and  must,  by  having 
deputed  him,  have  still  a  power  to  discard  him,  when  he 
fails  in  his  trust  ?'^ 

An  all-important  part  of  that  civil  liberty  of  which 
Locke  was  so  ardent  an  advocate  is  religious  liberty,  or 
liberty  of  conscience.  This,  he  thinks,  has  not  yet  been 
sufficiently  vindicated,  and  he  is  in  full  sympathy  with 
the  plea  for  toleration  which  had  been  so  earnestly  made 
by  such  theologians  as  Chillingworth  and  Jeremy  Taylor, 
as  well  as  by  the  Cambridge  Platonists,  whose  aversion  to 
dogmatic  intolerance  he  fully  shares.  *  We  have  need  of 
more  generous  remedies  than  what  have  yet  been  made 
use  of  in  our  distemper.  It  is  neither  Declarations  of 
Indulgence  nor  Acts  of  Comprehension,  such  as  yet  have 
been  practised  or  projected  amongst  us,  that  can  do  the 
work.  The  first  will  but  palliate,  the  second  increase  our 
evil.'^  What  is  needed  is* equal  and  impartial  liberty,' 
and  this  can  be  secured  only  by  the  absolute  separation  of 
the  sphere  of  the  Church  from  that  of  the  State.  The 
State  has  properly  to  do  only  with  the  temporal  well-being 
of  the  individual ;  his  spiritual  and  eternal  welfare  is  the 
concern  of  the  Church  alone.  So  long  as  the  Church 
keeps  within  its  own  province,  there  can  be  no  conflict 
between  ecclesiastical  and  civil  authority.  It  is  only 
when  the  Church  usurps  the  place  of  the  State,  and  inter- 
feres with  the  individual's  civil  allegiance,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  Church  of  Rome,  that  the  State  is  compelled  to 
assert  its  authority.  Here  Locke  finds  the  limit  of  the 
principle  of  toleration,  as  well  as  in  the  case  of  any  church 
which  is  itself  intolerant  and  in  that  of  the  atheistic  dis- 
solution of  the  social  order  itself.  In  all  other  cases  the 
principle  of  toleration  is  absolutely  valid.  The  opposite 
principle  inevitably  defeats  its  own  purpose,  since  not 
only  has  the  individual  an  indefeasible  right  to  religious 
freedom,  but  he  cannot  really  be  constrained  in  his 
religious  life.     The  State  is  able  by  its  coercion  to  pro- 

*  Sect.  240.  »  '  To  the  Reader.' 


LOCKE  119 

duce  hypocrites ;  it  cannot  dictate  to  the  free  spirit  of  the 
individual  in  that  inner  conduct  of  his  spiritual  life  which 
is  alone  rightly  called  religion. 

It  is  usual  with  literary  critics  to  condemn  Locke  as  a 
writer  devoid  of  style.  Mr.  Gosse,  for  example,  speaks 
of  the  Essay  as  'a  work  particularly  unengaging  in  its 
mere  style  and  delivery,'  ^  and  of  its  author  as  '  the  most 
innocent  of  style'  of  all  English  philosophers.  *As  a 
mere  writer  he  may  be  said  to  exhibit  the  prose  of  the 
Restoration  in  its  most  humdrum  form.  .  .  .  His  style  is 
prolix,  dull,  and  without  elevation  ;  he  expresses  himself 
with  perfect  clearness  indeed,  but  without  variety  or 
charm  of  any  kind.  He  seems  to  have  a  contempt  for 
all  the  arts  of  literature,  and  passes  on  from  sentence  to 
sentence  like  a  man  talking  aloud  in  his  study,  and  intent 
only  on  making  the  matter  in  hand  perfectly  clear  to 
himself.'  ^  Mr.  Gosse  acknowledges  that  '  this  is  not  the 
universal  view,'  and  that  *  it  is  usual  to  speak  of  the  home- 
spun style  of  Locke  as  "  forcible,"  "  incisive,"  and  even 
"  ingenious." '  That  it  possesses  at  least  these  qualities 
must,  I  think,  have  been  proved  to  the  reader  by  the 
quotations  made  in  the  course  of  this  chapter.  But  I 
should  be  inclined  to  claim  more  than  this ;  for  while 
Locke  is  certainly  careless  as  to  the  literary  form  of  his 
argument,  and  often  dull  and  tedious  through  his  habitual 
reiterativeness,  his  style  has  an  individuality,  and  even  a 
distinction,  which  are  appreciated  only  through  long 
familiarity  with  his  writing  ;  and  that  he  can  on  occasion 
rise  to  real  beauty  and  eloquence  of  literary  expression  is 
shown  by  such  a  passage  as  the  following  :  *  The  memory 
of  some  men,  it  is  true,  is  very  tenacious,  even  to  a  miracle. 
But  yet  there  seems  to  be  a  constant  decay  of  all  our 
ideas,  even  of  those  which  are  stuck  deepest,  and  in  minds 
the  most  retentive ;  so  that  if  they  be  not  sometimes 
renewed,  by  repeated  exercise  of  the  senses,  or  reflection 
on  those  kinds  of  objects  which  at  first  occasioned  them, 

^  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,  p.  Ji.  '  Ibid.,  p.  96. 


I20  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

the  print  wears  out,  and  at  last  there  remains  nothing  to 
be  seen.  Thus  the  ideas,  as  well  as  children,  of  our  youth, 
often  die  before  us  :  and  our  minds  represent  to  us  those 
tombs  to  which  we  are  approaching  ;  where,  though  the 
brass  and  marble  remain,  yet  the  inscriptions  are  effaced 
by  time,  and  the  imagery  moulders  away.'  ^ 

^  Essay,  II.  x.  5. 


PART   II 


THE   EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 

The  problem  of  the  English  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth 
century  is  set  for  them  by  Locke's  account  of  human 
knowledge.  In  place  of  the  efforts  which  occupy  the 
great  philosophic  minds  of  the  seventeenth  century  to 
construct  a  system  of  the  sciences,  a  universal  scheme  of 
things,  such  as  we  find  Bacon  and  Hobbes  attempting, 
their  work  is  controlled  by  the  necessity  of  answering  the 
previous  question,  first  raised  by  Locke,  of  the  nature  and 
the  limits  of  human  knowledge.  The  theory  of  know- 
ledge leads,  it  is  true,  in  Berkeley's  hands,  immediately 
to  a  corresponding  theory  of  reality.  Locke's  supposition 
of  an  unknown  and  unknowable  substance  underlying 
the  known  objects,  or  the  objects  so  far  as  they  enter 
into  human  experience,  having  been  discovered  to  be  an 
unmeaning  abstraction,  if  not  a  self-contradictory  con- 
ception, material  reality  is  identified  with  the  complex 
of  sensations,  and  an  idealistic  theory  is  substituted  for 
the  crude  realism  which  resulted  from  the  Lockian  theory 
of  knowledge  ;  the  two  substances  of  Locke  are  reduced 
to  the  one  spiritual  substance  of  Berkeley.  But  Hume, 
following  out  the  same  path,  prescribed  by  Locke — the 
path  of  experience  as  opposed  to  that  of  abstract  thought, 
the  path  of  criticism  as  distinguished  from  that  of  un- 
critical prejudgment,  is  confronted  once  more  with  Locke's 
problem  of  the  nature  and  limits  of  knowledge,  and  finds 
that  spiritual  substance  is  no  less  unmeaning  and  con- 
tradictory than  material ;  that,  as  the  esse  of  things  is 
percipi^  the  esse  of  mind  is  percipere  ;  that  the  self,  like  the 


122         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

not-self,  is  but  a  complex  of  ideas  or  states  of  conscious- 
ness. For  Hume,  moreover,  as  already  in  part  for 
Berkeley,  the  problem  of  knowledge  changes  its  aspect 
from  the  problem  of  substance  to  that  of  cause.  Berkeley 
insists  upon  the  impotence  of  matter,  even  more  than 
upon  its  mind-dependent  character  ;  but  he  is  no  less 
confident  than  Locke  himself  that  in  spirit,  whether 
human  or  divine,  we  find  the  true  fountain  of  causal 
energy  or  power.  Hume  finds  no  greater  validity  in 
spiritual  than  in  material  causes ;  in  both  cases  alike  the 
fact  of  experience  is  constant  or  uniform  succession,  and 
the  necessary  connexion  which  we  attribute  to  the  relation 
of  cause  and  effect  is  discovered  to  be  merely  a  subjective 
habit  or  custom  which  results  from  the  tendency  to 
associate  events  constantly  conjoined  in  our  experience, 
not  an  objective  characteristic  of  reality.  The  result  of 
the  further  investigation  of  the  problem  of  knowledge,  on 
the  empirical  lines  suggested  by  Locke  himself,  is  thus  the 
sceptical  reduction  of  knowledge  and  certainty  to  n4ere 
opinion  and  probability  :  no  science  or  certain  know- 
ledge, whether  of  minds  or  bodies,  is  attainable  by  man. 

This  sceptical  result  of  the  Lockian  empiricism  recalls 
attention  to  the  rational  constitution  of  knowledge,  which 
Locke  had  rather  assumed  than  proved ;  and  we  find 
Reid,  the  founder  of  the  Scottish  philosophy  of  Common 
Sense,  insisting  upon  the  rational  elements  which  are 
presupposed  in  all  knowledge  and  in  human  experience 
as  we  have  it.  At  the  end  as  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century  the  all-important  problem  of  philosophy  is  the 
problem  of  knowledge. 

In  the  ethical  sphere,  the  problem  is  really  set  by 
Hobbes,  the  unmitigated  egoism  of  whose  theory  is  op- 
posed by  the  *  moral  sense'  school,  whose  teaching,  as 
developed  by  Hume,  occasions  the  attempts  of  Hartley 
and  Adam  Smith  to  explain  the  moral  sense  by  association 
and  sympathy,  of  Tucker  and  Paley  to  reduce  virtue  to 
utility,  and  of  Price  to  establish  morality  on  a  rational 
basis. 


CHAPTER   I 

BERKELEY:    THE   NEW  IDEALISM 

The  pre-eminent  merits  of  Berkeley  as  a  philosophical 
writer  are  acknowledged  by  all  competent  judges.  It 
will  be  sufficient  here  to  mention  a  single  critic,  Mr. 
Gosse,  who  designates  him  as  *  perhaps  the  most  exquisite 
writer  of  English  in  his  generation,'  and  *one  of  the 
most  exquisite  writers  of  English  prose.'  Among  the 
writers  of  that  time,  *  it  may  perhaps  be  said  that  there 
is  not  one  who  is  quite  his  equal  in  style  ;  his  prose  is  dis- 
tinguished as  well  for  dignity  and  fulness  of  phrase,  as  for 
splendour  and  delicacy  of  diction,  without  effeminacy.'  ^ 
For  grace  as  well  as  lucidity  of  expression,  Berkeley  is  un- 
rivalled among  English  philosophers.  He  is,  moreover,  a 
master  of  that  most  difficult  form  of  prose  writing,  the 
dialogue.  In  the 'dramatic  movement  or  *  action'  of  the 
dialogue,  and  in  the  characterisation  of  the  interlocutors, 
his  dialogues,  especially  the  Akiphron  series,  remind  us 
forcibly  of  Plato. 

It  is  not  so  easy  to  determine  his  real  significance  as  a 
philosopher.  His  writings  are  dominated  throughout  by 
a  frankly  confessed  religious  or  theological  purpose,  which 
becomes  only  more  pronounced  and  engrossing  as  we 
pass  from  his  earlier  to  his  later  works.  His  great  foes, 
from  first  to  last,  are  *  Scepticism,'  *  Atheism,'  and  that 
*  Materialism '  in  which  he  sees  their  common  philosophical 
basis.  Of  the  Essay  towards  a  New  Theory  of  Vision,  his 
first-published  work,  we  find  him  writing  (to  Sir  John 

^  History  of  Eighteenth  Century  Literature,  pp.  96,  203. 
123 


124         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Percival) :  *  In  a  little  time  I  hope  to  make  what  is  there 
laid  down  appear  subservient  to  the  ends  of  morality 
and  religion.'  In  the  Treatise  concerning  the  Principles  of 
Human  Knowledge.,  published  in  the  following  year,  the 
reader  is  told,  on  the  title-page,  that  'the  chief  causes 
of  Error  and  Difficulty  in  the  Sciences,  with  the  grounds 
of  Scepticism,  Atheism,  and  Irreligion,  are  inquired  into.' 
The  Three  Dialogues  between  Hylas  and  Philonous  are 
intended  to  show,  among  other  things,  *the  Immediate 
Providence  of  a  Deity,  in  opposition  to  Sceptics  and 
Atheists.'  The  writings  of  the  second  period,  that  of 
middle  life,  are  more  exclusively  dominated  by  this  theo- 
logical purpose.  Jlciphron  or  the  Minute  Philosopher  is 
entitled  'an  Apology  for  the  Christian  Religion,  against 
those  who  are  called  Free-thinkers.'  In  Siris^  the  latest 
product  of  Berkeley's  reflection,  the  religious,  if  not  the 
theological,  interest  is  supreme.  The  mood  is  often  more 
mystical  than  philosophical,  and  his  sympathies  have  been 
greatly  widened,  but  hets^as  much  concerned  as  ever 
to  determine  what,  in  philosophical  thought,  is  and  is  not 
'Atheism.'  It  cannot  be  denied,  moreover,  that  he  be- 
trays, especially  in  his  prolonged  controversy  with  the 
deists  of  his  time,  a  real  unfairness  which  leads  him 
seriously  to  misrepresent  the  aims  and  arguments  of  his 
opponents.  This  biassed  and  unsympathetic  attitude  is 
apparent  even  in  his  discussion  of  Locke's  doctrine  of 
'  abstract  ideas '  in  the  Introduction  to  the  Principles^ 
and  is  too  characteristic  to  be  ascribed,  as  it  is  too 
generously  by  Professor  Campbell  Fraser,  to  his  natural 
'  impetuosity '  in  controversy.  It  is  a  serious  flaw  in  the 
polemics  of  an  author  whose  aims  are  so  worthy  and 
whose  ability  as  a  controversialist  ought  to  have  saved 
him  from  any  such  temptation. 

It  is  a  strange  irony  of  fate  that  a  philosophy  whose 
chief  aim  was  the  refutation  of  scepticism  should  itself 
have  come  to  be  regarded  as  simply  a  link  in  the  chain  of 
sceptical  reasoning  connecting  Locke  with  Hume,  so  that 
Berkeley  is  simply  an  incomplete  Hume,  and  Hume 
simply  a  Berkeley  who  has  learned  the  implications  of  his 


BERKELEY:   THE  NEW  IDEALISM     125 

own  philosophy.  So  far  as  the  history  of  philosophy  is 
concerned,  so  far  as  Berkeley's  philosophy  has  really  y^-.j  (^ " 
influenced  his  successors,  it  is  summed  up  in  his  Immateri-  ^ 
alism,  or_his  refutation  of  Locke's  doctrine  of  the  sub- 
stantial or  independent  existence  of  material  things  or  the 
obje'cts  bT~sense-perception7"~ By  following  out  Locke's 
own  *  new  way  oi  ideas,'  he  found  himself  forced  to  the 
conclusion  that  only  particular  things  exist ;  and  since  the 
particular  thing  is  always  a  complex  of  sensaTions.  and 
there  is  no  essential  difference  between  the  so-called 
primary  and  the  secondary  qualities,  both  bemg  alike 
mind-ilepeJidfint,  Locke's  '  material  substarvce'-ioiat^only 
loses  its  significance,  but  becomes  a  self-contradictory 
or  inconceivable  conception.  Since,  moreover,  ideas  are 
essentially  passive,  and  cannot  strictly  cause,  but  merely 
signify,  one  another ;  since  the  only  cause,  as  well  as 
the  only  substance,  is  found  in  the  spiritual  sphere,  it 
follows  that  the  explanation  of  things  in  terms  of  material 
or  mechanical  causes  is  no  real  explanation  at  all.  So  far 
as  ideas  go,  therefore — and  Berkeley  is  only  following  out 
Locke's  own  maxim  that  the  elements  of  all  knowledge 
areddeas — we  have  no  knowledge  either  of  material  sub- 
stance or  of  material  cause.  Hume  has  only  to  take  the 
final  step  to  reach  the  sceptical  goal  of  the  new  way  of 
ideas.  He  has  only  to  point  out  that  the  same  criticism 
which  Berkeley  applied  to  Locke's  material  substance  and 
material  cause  applies  to  spiritual  substance  and  spiritual 
cause,  to  reach  his  sceptical  dissolution  of  all  real  know- 
ledge. If  we  can  explain  only  in  terms  of  substance  and 
cause,  and  if  both  of  these  explanations  are  invalidated, 
then  reality  becomes  for  us  inexplicable,  a  mere  enigma. 

Nor  is  this  historical  interpretation  of  the  significance 
of  Berkeley's  philosophy  really,  on  the  whole,  unjust.  He 
spent  his  best  strength  and  did  his  real  work  in.  the  de- 
structive criticism  of  Locke's  account  of  external  reality  ; 
his  own  doctrine  of  Immaterialism  is  his  real  contribution  ,  ^^ 
to  English  philosophy  and,  indirectly  IF noE^Trectly,  to 
EuropeaJi_4?hilpso£hy.  The  work  of  reconstruction,  to 
which  in  his  own  mind  this  destructive  criticism  was  always 


126         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

subordinate,  is  comparatively  ineffective.  His.  doctrine  of 
the*  notion,'  as  distinguished  from  the  *  idea,' /vyas^n  ever 
developed  with  anything  h'ke  the  clearness  which  be- 
longed to  his  development  of  Locke's  doctrine  of  ideas  into 
its  negative  consequences  for  the  Lockian  doctrine  of 
material  reality.  The  existence  of  the  self,  of  other  selves, 
and  of  God  is  rather  assumed  than  proved.  We  cannot 
resist  the  conclusion  that  Berkeley's  positive  or  spiritual 
doctrine  rests  rather  upon  common  sense  or  religious  faith 
than  upon  a  reasoned  philosophy.  The  years  of  middle  age 
were  too  busy  with  practical  and  philanthropic  activities 
to  permit  of  any  resumption  of  the  strenuous  philosophical 
effort  of  his  youth  ;  their  absorbing  intellectual  interest 
was  the  defence  of  the  faith  from  the  attacks  of  deists 
and  '  free-thinkers.'  And  when  at  last  he  comes,  in  5/m, 
to  gather  up  the  final  results  of  his  *  philosophical  Reflexions 
and  Inquiries,'  pursued  in  the  quiet  closing  years  at  Cloyne, 
what  he  gives  us  is  rather  an  eclectic  philosophy  culled 
from  the  ancient  writers,  especially  Plato  and  the  Neo- 
Platonists,  something  between  a  metaphysical  idealism  of 
the  Platonic  type  and  a  mysticism  of  the  Neo-Platonic 
sort,  than  a  systematic  development  of  his  earlier  immateri- 
alism  into  a  spiritual  realism  or  rational  idealism. 

Yet,  though  the  philosophy  of  Berkeley  may  justly  be 
regarded  as  only  a  splendid  fragment,  rather  than  a  com- 
pletely developed  system  of  thought,  we  must  not  mini- 
mise its  real  importance,  which  is  rimch  greater  than  such 
a  representation  would  suggest.  CProfessor  Fraser  has 
truly  said  of  *  the  new  conception  of  matter  presented 
by  Berkeley'  that  'its  consequences  justify  us  in  regard- 
ing it  as  one  of  the  conceptions  that  mark  epochs,  and 
become  springs  of  spiritual  progress '  ^  His  philosophic 
genius  may  be  said  to  have  spent  itself  in  a  single  ffesh 
of  insight,  in  the  clear  apprehension  of  one  great  truth 
about  external  reality  and  man's  knowledge  of  it ;  but  so 
brilliant  is  this  one  achievement,  so  epoch-making  is  its 
importance,  not  only  for  the  sceptical  reduction  of  Lockian 

*  Selections  from  Berkeley,  Introd. ,  p.  xiii. 


BERKELEY:   THE  NEW  IDEALISM     127 

principles  in  Hume,  but  for  the  subsequent  movement  of 
philosophical  reconstruction  in  Kant  and  his  successors, 
that  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  Berkeley,  is  the  founder 
of  modern  idealism,  and  that  the  ability  to  appreciate  and 
to  assimilate~TTir  conception  of  external  reality  may  be 
taken  as  a  *  touchstone  of  metaphysical  sagacity.'  For  it 
was  Berkeley  who  first  discovered  the  alternative  of  a 
spiritual  monism  to  the  dualism  alike  of  the  Lockian 
and  of  the  Cartesian  philosophy  ;  who  first  ventured  the 
affirmation  that  the  esse  of  material  and  extended  things  is 
percipij  that  the  primary  reality  is  spiritual  and  the  reality 
of  the  material  world  mind-dependent ;  that  matter  and 
extension  are  neither  substantial  nor  attributes,  co-ordi- 
nate with  thought,  of  one  ultimate  substance,  but  in  their 
very  nature  subordinate  to  thought  and  the  thinking  mind. 
And  if  Locke  had  already  hinted  that  true  agency  is  to  be 
found  only  in  the  spiritual  sphere,  it  was  Berkeley  who  first 
clearly  apprehended  the  essentially  passive  and  impotent 
character  of  material  *  forces,'  and  pointed  persistently  to 
mind  or  will  as  the  one  true  cause.  It  was  Berkeley  who 
first  in  modern  philosophy  discovered  the  importance  of  the 
subject  for  knowledge  ;  who  first  clearly  saw  that,  so  far  from 
its  being  the  function  of  the  knowing  mind  to  reproduce  an 
object  presented  to  it  from  without,  the  object  's  de- 
pendent for  its  very  existence  upon  the  knowing  subject. 
This  discovery  of  the  true  importance  of  tlie_subject  is 
the  very  niark  of  modern  as  distinguished  from  ancient 
idealism,  of  the  idealism  of  Kant  and  Hegel  as  distin- 
guished from  that  of  Plato  and  Aristotle.  And  if,  in  the 
light  of  later  reflection  and  deeper  insight,  Berkeley's 
account  of  reality  appears  naive  and  fragmentary,  it  is  yet 
not  difficult  to  recognise  in  his  simple  words  the  essential 
message  of  later  idealism.  '  Some  truths  there  are  so  near 
and  obvious  to  the  mind  that  a  man  need  only  open  his 
eyes  to  see  them.  Such  I  take  this  important  one  to  be, 
viz.  that  all  the  choir  of  heaven  and  furniture  of  the  earth, 
in  a  word  all  those  bodies  which  compose  the  mighty 
frame  of  the  world,  have  not  any  subsistence  without  a 
mind  ;    that    their   being  is  to   be   perceived  or  known  ; 


128  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

that  consequently  so  long  as  they  are  not  actually  per- 
ceived by  me,  or  do  not  exist  in  my  mind,  or  that  of  any 
other  created  spirit,  they  must  either  have  no  existence  at 
all,  or  else  subsist  in  the  mind  of  some  Eternal  Spirit :  it 
being  perfectly  unintelligible,  and  involving  all  the  ab- 
surdity of  abstraction,  to  attribute  to  any  single  part  of 
them  an  existence  independent  of  a  spirit.'  ^  ^ 

We  learn  from  Berkeley's  Commonplace  Book,  written 
from  time  to  time  during  his  undergraduate  years  at 
Trinity  College,  Dublin,  that  the  great  formative  influ- 
ence of  his  youth  was  Locke's  Essay  which,  through  the 
influence  of  Molyneux,  had  been  prescribed  as  a  text-book 
at  Dublin,  and  appears  to  have  excited  this  student  at 
any  rate  to  independent  critical  activity.  To  appreciate 
Berkeley's  criticism,  it  is  important  to  recall  just  how  far 
Locke  himself  had  gone  in  the  direction  of  idealising 
reality,  how  far  he  had  himself  followed  out  his  new  way 
of  ideas.  He  hadproclaimed  that  our  knowledge  of  reality 
consists  of  ideas  and  is,  therefore,  mind-dependent.  But 
he  had  at  the  same  time  recognised  a  non-ideal  and  inde- 
pendent aspect  of  reality,  and  distinguished  the  secondary 
qualities,  as  merely  ideal,  from  the  primary,  as  having  both 
an  ideal  and  a  real,  or  independent,  existence.  The 
secondary  qualities,  he  had  insisted,  are  reducible  to  the 
primary,  however  mysterious  the  connexion  between  the 
former  and  the  latter  may  be.  Finally,  he  had  postulated 
two  kinds  of  substance  as  the  suhstrata.  of  the. ideas  of 
sensation-and-the  ideas  of  reflection  respectively,  and  held 
that,  in  some  to  us  unintelligible  way,  the  material  sub- 
stance operates  upon  the  spiritual,  and  produces  in  it  those 
ideas  which  correspond  to  the  real  qualities  of  material 
things. 

Now  Berkeley  argues  that  this  Lockian  theory  of  a 
merely  partial  equivalence  between  the  ideal  and  the  real 
object,  this  postulation  of  anon-ideal  and,  in  its  substantial 
reality,  unknowable  object,  is  not  merely  superfluous  but 

^  Principles  of  Human  Knowledge,  sect  6. 


BERKELEY:   THE  NEW  IDEALISM     129 

unmeaning.  The  only  object  of  which  we  can  speak  in- 
telligently is  the  object  as  we  know  it,  that  is,  the  object 
which  consists  in  ideas  or  sensations.  To  speak  of  ideas 
as  corresponding  to  or  resembling  non-ideal  objects,  is 
absurd  :  an  idea  can  only  resemble  an  idea.  The  distinc- 
tion between  ideas  and  real  things  makes  real  knowledge 
impossible,  and  leads  inevitably  to  scepticism  ;  since,  in 
that  case,  we  know  only  relations  of  ideas  to  one  another, 
never  the  relation  of  ideas  to  things.'  *The  referring 
ideas  to  things  which  are  not  ideas,  the  using  the  term 
"  idea  of,"  is  one  great  cause  of  mistake.'  ^  *  How  can  you 
compare  any  things  besides  your  own  ideas  ? '  2  '  This, 
which,  if  I  mistake  not,  hath  been  shown  to  be  a  most 
groundless  and  absurd  notion,  is  the  very  root  of  Scepti- 
cism ;  for,  so  long  as  men  thought  that  real  things  sub- 
sisted without  the  mind,  and  that  their  knowledge  was 
only  so  far  forth  real  as  it  was  conformable  to  real  things^ 
it  follows  they  could  not  be  certain  that  they  had  any  real 
knowledge  at  all.  For  how  can  it  be  known  that  the 
things  which  are  perceived  are  conformable  to  those  . 
which  are  not  perceived,  or  exist  without  the  mind  ? ' '  3 
Locke  had  himself  admitted  that  the  secondary  qualities 
exist  only  in  the  mind  that  perceives  them.  The  same 
reasons  ought  to  have  led  him  to  see  that  the  so-called 
*  primary '  qualities  are  also  exclusively  mental,  and  there- 
fore that  the  only  reality  of  which  we  can  intelligently 
speak  is  mind-dependent  or  ideal,  that  the  esse  of  all 
material  things  is  percipt. 

Locke  had  attributed  our  ignorance  of  the  real  essence 
of  things  to  the  imperfection  of  our  human  faculties  ;  he 
had  accounted  for  the  limitations  of  our  knowledge  by 
reference  to  the  practical  uses  which  it  is  intended  to 
serve  and  for  which,  in  spite  of  its  theoretic  inadequacy, 
it  is  entirely  sufficient.  In  Berkeley's  judgment  it  is  not 
the  defect  of  our  faculties,  but  our  misuse  of  them,  that  is 
the  cause  of  our  ignorance  of  reality.  *It  is  said  the 
faculties  we  have  are  few,  and  those  designed  by  nature 

^  Works,  i.  35.  »  Works,  i.  82. 

*  Principles,  sect.  86. 


I30         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

for  the  support  and  pleasure  of  life,  and  not  to  penetrate 
into  the  inward  essence  and  constitution  of  things.  .  .  . 
But,  perhaps,  we  may  be  too  partial  to  ourselves  in  placing 
the  fault  originally  in  our  faculties,  and  not  rather  in  the 
wrong  use  we  make  of  them.  .  .  .  Upon  the  whole,  I  am 
inclined  to  think  that  the  far  greater  part,  if  not  all,  of 
those  difficulties  which  have  hitherto  amused  philosophers, 
and  blocked  up  the  way  to  knowledge,  are  entirely  owing 
to  ourselves.  We  have  first  raised  a  dust,  and  then 
complain  we  cannot  see.*  ^  The  great  obstacle  to  know- 
ledge is  found  by  Berkeley,  as  it  was  found  by  Locke, 
in  the  misuse  of  words,  in  the  substitution  of  words  for 
ideas.  It  is  '  the  mist  and  veil  of  words  '  that  has  chiefly 
obscured  from  us  the  true  nature  of  reality.  All  our 
ideas  are  really  particular  and  concrete  ;  it  is  only  be- 
cause we  have  been  content  to  accept  words  in  place  of 
ideas  that  we  have  imagined  the  possibility  of  *  abstract  * 
general  ideas.  Locke  himself  has  been  the  victim  of  such 
verbalism  and  abstraction  ;  for  what  else  is  his  *  material 
substance'  but  an  abstract  idea,  or  a  mere  word  which 
represents  no  idea  at  all  ? 

CThe  discussion  of  abstract  ideas,  to  which  Berkeley 
devotes  the  Introduction  to  the  Principles^  is  calculated  to 
produce  a  wrong  impression  both  of  Locke's  views  and  of  his 
own.)  Using  the  term  '  idea '  in  a  much  narrower  sense 
than  that  in  which  Locke  had  used  it,  he  has  no  difficulty 
in  convicting  Locke  of  absurdities  of  thought  which  are 
entirely  foreign  to  his  actual  views.  (For  Locke  an  idea  is 
*  whatsoever  is  the  object  of  the  understanding  when  a 
man  thinks ' :  hence  he  uses  it  *  to  express  whatever  is 
meant  by  phantasm^  notion^  species^  or  whatever  it  is  which 
the  mind  can  be  employed  about  in  thinking.'  "^  For 
Berkeley  *idea'  means,  as  Professor  Fraser  says,  *  object 
presented  to  the  senses,  or  represented  in  imagination.'  * 
An  abstract  idea,  therefore,  he  has  no  difficulty  in 
showing,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  since  it  is  equivalent 
to  an  abstract  image.)  It  is  impossible  to  imagine  colour 

*  Principles,  Introd.,  sects.  2,  3.  '  Essay,  Introd.,  sect.  8. 

'  Selections,  5th  ed.,  p.  1 1,  note  2. 


BERKELEY:   THE  NEW  IDEALISM     131 

in  general,  or  a  triangle  which  is  neither  equilateral, 
isosceles,  nor  scalenon.  But  it  does  not  follow  that  it  is 
impossible  to  think  of  colour  in  general  or  of  a  triangle 
in  general,  or  that  abstract  ideas,  in  the  sense  of  general 
ideas  or  thoughts,  are  impossible.  Berkeley,  in  his 
Commonplace  Book,  notes  that  there  is  *  a  great  difference 
between  considering  length  without  breadth,  and  having 
an  ideay  or  imagining  length  without  breadth.'  ^  And 
while  it  has  often  been  inferred  from  his  argument  against 
abstract  ideas  that  Berkeley  was  a  strict  nominalist,  and 
denied  the  validity  of  universals  or  concepts,  the  truth  is  that 
he  explicitly  affirms  his  belief  in  the  possibility  of  general, 
as  distinguished  from  abstract  ideas,  and  in  doing  so  parts 
company  with  strict  nominalism  and,  in  his  doctrine  of 
conceptualism,  leaves  open  the  possibility,  if  indeed  he 
does  not  imply  the  necessity,  of  realism  in  the  only 
sense  in  which  such  a  doctrine  is  now  held.  CWhile  all 
ideas  are,  in  themselves,  particular,  any  idea  may  acquire 
generality  by  being  used  to  represent  other  particular  ideas 
or  the  element  common  to  a  number  of  particular  ideas. 
*It  is,  I  know,  a  point  much  insisted  on,  that  all  know- 
ledge and  demonstration  are  about  universal  notions,  to 
which  I  fully  agree.  But  then  it  does  not  appear  to  me 
that  those  notions  are  formed  by  abstraction  in  the  manner 
premised — universality^  so  far  as  I  can  comprehend,  not 
consisting  in  the  absolute,  positive  nature  or  conception  of 
anything,  but  in  the  relation  it  bears  to  the  particulars 
signified  or  represented  by  it ;  by  virtue  whereof  it  is  that 
things,  names,  or  notions,  being  in  their  own  nature 
particular,  are  rendered  universal.  Thus,  when  I  demon- 
strate any  proposition  concerning  triangles,  it  is  supposed 
that  I  have  in  view  the  universal  idea  of  a  triangle  :  which 
ought  not  to  be  understood  as  if  I  could  frame  an  idea  of 
a  triangle  which  was  neither  equilateral,  nor  scalenon,  nor 
equicrural ;  but  only  that  the  particular  triangle  I  consider, 
whether  of  this  or  that  sort  it  matters  not,  doth  equally  stand 
for  and  represent  all  rectilineal  triangles  whatsoever,  and  is 

»  Works,  i.  78. 


132  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

in  that  sense  universal.  All  which  seems  very  plain  and  not 
to  include  any  difficulty  in  it.'  ^  *  It  must  be  acknow^ledged 
that  a  man  may  consider  a  figure  merely  as  triangular ; 
without  attending  to  the  particular  qualities  of  the  angles, 
or  relations  of  the  sides.  So  far  he  may  abstract.  ...  In 
like  manner  we  may  consider  Peter  so  far  forth  as  man,  or 
so  far  forth  as  animal,  without  framing  the  aforementioned 
abstract  idea,  either  of  man  or  of  animal ;  inasmuch  as  all 
that  is  perceived  is  not  considered.'  v  It  does  not  belong  to 
Berkeley's  polemical  purpose  in  the  discussion  to  develop 
the  realistic  implications  of  his  position,  or  to  show  how 
it  is  that  an  idea,  in  itself  particular,  is  qualified  to  represent 
other  particular  ideas  of  the  same  class.  The  abstract 
terms  which  he  is  concerned  to  invalidate  are  merely 
general.  Of  these  the  great  example  is  Locke's  abstract 
'  Matter,'  from  which  all  particular,  and  therefore  all 
general,  qualities  have  been  removed.  Against  such  an 
'  abstract  idea '  as  this  his  criticism  is  completely  cogent. 

If,  then,  we  are  not  to  content  ourselves  with  mere 
meaningless  words,  if  the  word  *  Matter '  is  to  stand  for 
an  idea  or  to  have  a  meaning,  we  must  translate  it  into 
the  particular  ideas  of  our  experience.  Abstract  from  any 
of  the  concrete  objects  of  our  sense-perception  all  the 
particular  qualities  of  which  we  become  aware  only  in 
perception,  and  which  are  therefore  dependent  for  their 
existence  upon  percipient  mind  ;  and  what  remains  is  not 
the  general  or  abstract  idea  of  Matter,  but  simply  nothing 
at  all.  The  reality  of  all  external  things  consists  in  the 
particular  sensations  from  which  they  derive  their  names, 
and  by  which  they  are  distinguished  from  one  another  ; 
think  away  these  particular  ideas,  and  the  idea  of  the 
thing  vanishes  with  them.  And  if  it  be  objected  that 
Matter  must  still  be  postulated  as  the  substratum  or  support 
of  the  qualities,  that  the  '  thing '  is  not  to  be  resolved  into 
the  'qualities'  which  belong  to  it,  Berkeley  retorts  with 
the  question.  What  can  be  the  support  of  ideas  or  sensa- 
tions but  percipient  mind  ?      The  thing  is  nothing  but 

*  Principles,  Introd.,  sect  15.  *  Ibid.,  sect  16  (2nd  ed.). 


BERKELEY:   THE  NEW  IDEALISM     133 

the  sum  of  its  qualities ;  what  is  true  of  each  of  these 
quah'ties  is  true  of  their  sum.  The  thing  itself,  so  far  as 
we  can  intelligently  speak  of  it,  depends  for  its  existence 
upon  percipient  mind. 

The  disappearance  of  Locke's  material  substance,  the 
reduction  of  Matter  to  terms  of  Mind,  the  discovery  of 
the  esse  of  things  in  their  percipi^  not  only  delivers  us  from 
that  scepticism  which  was  the  inevitable  consequence  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  independent  existence  of  matter  ;  it 
delivers  us  also  from  that  materialism  which  Berkeley 
finds  to  be  the  common  tendency  of  the  Lockian  and  of 
the  Cartesian  dualism,  and  of  the  spirit  and  method  of  the 
science  of  his  time.  In  our  total  ignorance  of  the  nature 
of  substance,  we  could  see  no  reason,  according  to  Locke, 
why  Matter  should  not  be  endowed  by  God  with  the 
power  to  think,  so  that  finite  spirits  might,  after  all,  be 
merely  material  beings  gifted  with  this  strange  power. 
He  had,  moreover,  explained  the  secondary  qualities  in 
terms  of  the  primary,  accepting  the  *  corpuscularian 
hypothesis'  as  to  the  causation  of  ideas  in  our  minds  by 
material  things  outside  us.  In  the  Cartesian  dualism 
Berkeley  saw  the  same  tendency.  The  absolute  separation 
of  the  two  spheres  of  thought  and  extension  implied  that 
there  could  be  no  interaction  of  mind  and  matter,  and 
therefore  that  all  explanation  of  material  phenomena  must 
be  in  terms  of  matter  and  motion.  And  he  found  the 
scientific  minds  of  his  age  devoted  to  the  investigation, 
in  the  spirit  of  Bacon,  of  efficient,  to  the  exclusion  of  final 
causes  ;  fascinated  by  the  same  spell  of  the  '  corpuscularian 
hypothesis.'  The  logical  implication  of  all  this  seemed  to 
him  to  be  nothing  less  than  the  explicit  and  uncompromis- 
ing materialism  of  Hobbes.  It  is  not  so  much  Locke  or 
the  Cartesians  or  the  scientific  thinkers  of  his  own  day 
that  he  has  in  view  as  Hobbes,  in  whom  he  sees  the  full 
fruition,  in  anticipation,  of  the  tendencies  which  they 
represent.  Hobbes  has  once  for  all  made  explicit  the 
materialism  and  the  atheism  which  are  implicit  in  such 
views  ;  and  it  is  against  this  materialism  and  atheism  that 
Berkeley's  entire  philosophy,  whether  in  the  Essay  on  Vision 


134         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

and  the  Principles  of  his  youth,  or  in  the  Alciphron  of  his 
middle  age,  or  even  in  the  5/m  of  his  later  years,  is  one 
continued  protest.  The  sceptical  tendency  was  the 
characteristic  evil  of  the  Lockian  philosophy  ;  the  ten- 
dency to  materialism  and  atheism  vv^as  the  characteristic 
vice  of  the  age  itself.  If  the  interests  of  the  spiritual  life 
were  to  be  secured,  if  spirit  was  not  to  be  reduced  to 
terms  of  matter,  matter  must  be  reduced  to  terms  of 
spirit. 

(with  its  substantiality,  matter  loses 'at  the  same  time 
its  causal  power.  >  If  matter  consists  in  ideas,  it  is 
clearly  passive,  and  the  sole  agent  is  seen  to  be  mind  or 
spirit.  One  idea  cannot  be  the  cause  of  another  idea ;  it 
can  only  be  its  sign  or  symbol,  suggesting  it  as  a  word 
suggests  its  meaning  to  those  who  have  learned  what  it 
represents.  The  business  of  science  is  simply  the  inter- 
pretation of  these  natural  signs,  the  study  of  this  language 
of  nature.  This  new  interpretation  of  natural  causation 
which,  by  convicting  the  material  world  of  impotence,  at 
the  same  time  discovers  in  it  the  revelation  of  the  divine 
Spirit  speaking  to  the  spirit  of  man  in  the  language  of 
natural  signs,  is  most  fully  unfolded  in  Berkeley's  earliest 
work,  the  Essay  towards  a  New  Theory  of  Fision.  The 
immediate  object  of  the  treatise  was  to  give  a  preliminary, 
and  intentionally  incomplete,  account  of  the  doctrine  of 
Immaterialism,  which  Berkeley  had  already  formulated  in 
his  own  mind,  and  of  which  he  gave  a  complete  exposition 
in  the  Principles^  published  in  the  following  year.  Its  main 
thesis  accordingly  is  that  the  object  of  vision  is  merely 
colour  or  coloured  extension  and,  since  this  is  obviously 
an  idea,  that  the  object  of  vision  is  mind-dependent. 
The  view  commonly  held  was  that  we  see  much  more 
than  this,  namely,  external  objects  or  distance  outward 
from  the  eye.  But  distance,  Berkeley  contends,  cannot 
strictly  be  seen  ;  we  see  only  coloured  points  or  the 
ends  of  the  rays  of  light  which  reach  the  eye,  not  the 
rays  themselves.  Outness  or  space  is  a  mere  abstract 
idea ;  reduce  it  to  its  concrete  particulars,  and  it  becomes 


BERKELEY:    THE  NEW  IDEALISM     135 

the  tactual  sensations  which  are  suggested  by  the  visual 
sensations,  because  they  have  been  constantly  connected 
with  the  latter  in  our  experience.  We  do  not  see  distant 
objects,  we  foresee  or  expect  them ;  and  '  they '  are  not 
so  much  future  objects  of  vision  as  future  objects  of  touch. 
*  In  treating  of  Vision,'  he  tells  us  in  the  later  '  Vindication ' 
of  the  theory,  *  it  was  my  purpose  to  consider  the  effects 
and  appearances^  the  objects  perceived  by  my  senses,  the 
ideas  of  sight  as  connected  with  those  of  touch  ;  to  inquire 
how  one  idea  comes  to  suggest  another  belonging  to  a 
different  sense,  how  things  visible  suggest  things  tangible, 
how  present  things  suggest  things  more  remote  and  future, 
whether  by  likeness,  by  necessary  connexion,  by  geo- 
metrical inference,  or  by  arbitrary  institution.'^ 

So  far  as  the  problem  of  the  mere  psychology  of  vision 
is  concerned,  Locke  had  suggested  and,  to  a  certain  extent, 
anticipated  Berkeley's  solution  in  a  well-known  passage. 
*The  ideas  we  receive  by  sensation  are  often,  in  grown 
people,  altered  by  the  judgment,  without  our  taking 
notice  of  it.  When  we  set  before  our  eyes  a  round 
globe  of  any  uniform  colour,  e.g.  gold,  alabaster,  or  jet, 
it  is  certain  that  the  idea  thereby  imprinted  on  our 
mind  is  of  a  flat  circle,  variously  shadowed,  with  several 
degrees  of  light  and  brightness  coming  to  our  eyes. 
But  we  having,  by  use,  been  accustomed  to  perceive  what 
kind  of  appearance  convex  bodies  are  wont  to  make  in 
us ;  what  alterations  are  made  in  the  reflections  of  light 
by  the  difference  of  the  sensible  figures  of  bodies ; — the 
judgment  presently,  by  an  habitual  custom,  alters  the 
appearances  into  their  causes.  So  that  from  that  which 
is  truly  variety  of  shadow  or  colour,  collecting  the  figure, 
it  makes  it  pass  for  a  mark  of  figure,  and  frames  to  itself 
the  perception  of  a  convex  figure  and  an  uniform  colour ; 
when  the  idea  we  receive  from  thence  is  only  a  plane 
variously  coloured,  as  is  evident  in  painting.' ^  Berkeley 
carries  the  psychological  investigation  further  than  Locke 

^  The  Theory  of  Visual  Language  Vindicated  and  Explained, 
sect.  14. 

«  Essay,  II.  ix.  8. 


136         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

had  done  ;  but  his  own  interest  in  his  theory  of  vision  is 
philosophical  rather  than  psychological,  and  its  philo- 
sophical interest  for  us,  if  not  for  his  first  readers,  lies 
not  so  much  in  its  main  thesis  of  the  mind-dependent 
character  of  the  objects  of  vision,  in  the  strict  sense,  as 
in  its  formulation,  with  special  reference  to  vision,  of 
the  theory  of  sense-symbolism.  The  data  of  sight  are 
the  signs  of  the  data  of  touch  ;  and  the  connexion  be- 
tween the  sign  and  the  thing  signified  is  as  arbitrary  as 
the  connexion  between  a  word  and  its  meaning.  That 
this  was  Berkeley's  own  chief  interest  in  the  problem 
of  vision  is  evident  from  the  following  statement :  *  How 
comes  it  to  pass  that  we  apprehend  by  the  ideas  of  sight 
certain  other  ideas,  which  neither  resemble  them,  nor 
cause  them,  nor  are  caused  by  them,  nor  have  any  necessary 
connexion  with  them  ? — The  solution  of  this  problem,  in 
its  full  extent,  doth  comprehend  the  whole  Theory  of 
Vision,  This  stating  of  the  matter  placeth  it  on  a  new 
foot,  and  in  a  different  light  from  all  preceding  theories.  .  .  . 
To  which  the  proper  answer  is — That  this  is  done  in  virtue 
of  an  arbitrary  connexion^  instituted  by  the  Author  of  Nature.''  ^ 
In  the  Principles  this  interpretation  of  natural  causation  is 
generalised.  'The  connexion  of  ideas  does  not  imply  the 
relation  of  cause  and  effect^  but  only  of  a  mark  or  sign  with 
the  thing  signified.  The  fire  which  I  see  is  not  the  cause 
of  the  pain  I  suffer  upon  my  approaching  it,  but  the  mark 
that  forewarns  me  of  it.  In  like  manner  the  noise  that  I 
hear  is  not  the  effect  of  this  or  that  motion  or  collision  of 
the  ambient  bodies,  but  the  sign  thereof  .  .  .  Hence,  it 
is  evident  that  those  things  which,  under  the  notion  of  a 
cause  co-operating  or  concurring  to  the  production  of 
effects,  are  altogether  inexplicable  and  run  us  into  great 
absurdities,  may  be  very  naturally  explained,  and  have  a 
proper  and  obvious  use  assigned  to  them,  when  they  are 
considered  only  as  marks  or  signs  for  our  information. 
And  it  is  the  searching  after  and  endeavouring  to  under- 
stand this  Language  (if  I  may  so  call  it)  of  the  Author  of 

^  The  Theory  of  Visual  Language  Vindicated  and  Explained,  sects. 
42,  43- 


BERKELEY:    THE  NEW  IDEALISM    137 

Nature,  that  ought  to  be  the  employment  of  the  natural 
philosopher ;  and  not  the  pretending  to  explain  things  by 
corporeal  causes,  which  doctrine  seems  to  have  too  much 
estranged  the  minds  of  men  from  that  Active  Principle, 
that  supreme  and  wise  Spirit  "  in  whom  we  live,  move, 
and  have  our  being." '  ^  \ 

The  disproof  of  the  validity  of  the  conceptions  of  sub- 
stance and  cause,  when  applied  to  the  material  world,  that 
is,  the  world  of  ideas  or  sensations,  is  for  Berkeley  in  itself 
the  proof  of  the  validity  of  their  application  to  the  world 
of  spirit.  The  proved  unsubstantiality  and  impotence  of 
things  is  the  demonstjation  of  the  substantiality  and  power 
of  persons  or  spirits,  mjln  the  first  place,  as  the  esse  of  things 
is  percipi J  jhe  esse  of  mind  or  spirit  \%  perdpere  ,-jfcerception 
implies  a  percipient  mind.  The  percipient  sffbject  must 
be  distinguished  from  the  perceptions  of  which  it  is  the 
presupposition.  ( '  Besides  all  that  endless  variety  of  ideas 
or  objects  of  knowledge,  there  is  likewise  Something  which  ,  ■, 
knows  or  perceives  them  ;  and  exercises  divers  operations,'  '^ 
as  willing,  imagining,  remembering,  about  them.  This 
perceiving,  active  being  is  what  I  call  mind^  spirit,  soul, 
or  myself.  By  which  words  I  do  not  denote  any  one  of 
my  ideas,  but  a  thing  entirely  distinct  from  them,  wherein 
they  exist,  or,  which  is  the  same  thing,  whereby  they  are 
perceived  ;  fof  the  existence  of  an  idea  consists  in  being 
perceived.' 2  J^Of  the  self  we  have  not  an  Mdea,'  but  a 
*  notion.'  *  We  may  be  said  to  have  some  knowledge  or 
notion  of  our  own  minds,  of  spirits  and  active  beings; 
whereof  in  a  strict  sense  we  have  not  ideas.  In  like 
manner,  we  know  and  have  a  notion  of  relations  between 
things  or  ideas  ;  which  relations  are  distinct  from  the  ideas 
or  things  related,  inasmuch  as  the  latter  may  be  perceived 
by  us  without  our  perceiving  the  former.  To  me  it  seems 
that  ideas,  spirits,  and  relations  are  all  in  their  respective 
kinds  the  object  of  human  knowledge  and  subject  of  dis- 
course ;    and   that  the    term    idea   would    be   improperly 

^  Principles,  sects.  65,  66.  *  Ibid.,  sect.  2. 


138         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

extended   to  signify   everything   we   know   or    have   any 
notion  of.'^  ^ 

(  In  the  Third  Dialogue  between  Hylas  and  Philonous 
Berkeley  has  anticipated  Hume's  criticism  that  the  same 
objections  which  Berkeley  has  urged  against  the  existence 
of  material  substance  are  applicable  to  his  own  concep- 
tion of  spiritual  substance.  *  You  acknowledge  you  have, 
properly  speaking,  no  idea  of  your  own  soul.  You  even 
affirm  that  spirits  are  a  sort  of  beings  altogether  different 
from  ideas.  Consequently  that  no  idea  can  be  like  a 
spirit.  We  have  therefore  no  idea  of  any  spirit.  You 
admit  nevertheless  that  there  is  a  spiritual  Substance, 
although  you  have  no  idea  of  it ;  while  you  deny  there 
can  be  such  a  thing  as  material  Substance,  because  you 
have  no  notion  or  idea  of  it.  Is  this  fair  dealing  ?  To 
act  consistently,  you  must  either  admit  Matter  or  reject 
Spirit.  What  say  you  to  this  ? '  Berkeley's  answer  is  that 
the  cases  differ  in  two  all-important  respects.  First,  the 
notion  of  matter,  as  the  unthinking  support  of  ideas,  is 
*  repugnant '  or  self-contradictory,  whereas  *  it  is  no 
repugnancy  to  say  that  a  perceiving  thing  should  be  the 
subject  of  ideas,  or  an  active  thing  the  cause  of  them.' 
Secondly,  while  '  I  have  no  reason  for  believing  the 
existence  of  Matter,'  *  the  being  of  my  Self,  that  is,  my 
own  soul,  mind,  or  thinking  principle,  I  evidently  know 
by  reflexion.'  Hylas  still  objects  :  '  Notwithstanding  all 
you  have  said,  to  me  it  seems  that,  according  to  your 
own  way  of  thinking,  and  in  consequence  of  your  own 
principles,  it  should  follow  that  you  are  only  a  system  of 
floating  ideas,  without  any  substance  to  support  them. 
Words  are  not  to  be  used  without  a  meaning.  And,  as 
there  is  no  more  meaning  in  spiritual  Substance  than  in 
material  Substance^  the  one  is  to  be  exploded  as  well  as 
the  other.'  Berkeley's  reply,  in  the  person  of  Philonous, 
is  as  follows  :  '  How  often  must  I  repeat,  that  I  know 
or  am  conscious  of  my  own  being  ;  and  that  /  fnyselfam 
not   my    ideas,   but   somewhat   else,   a   thinking,   active 

*  PrincipleSy  sect.  89. 


BERKELEY:    THE  NEW  IDEALISM     139 

principle  that  perceives,  knows,  wills,  and  operates  about 
ideas.  I  know  that  I,  one  and  the  same  self,  perceive 
both  colours  and  sounds  :  that  a  colour  cannot  perceive 
a  sound,  nor  a  sound  a  colour  :  that  I  am  therefore  one 
individual  principle,  distinct  from  colour  and  sound  ;  and, 
for  the  same  reason,  from  all  other  sensible  things  and 
inert  ideas.  But,  I  am  not  in  like  manner  conscious 
either  of  the  existence  or  essence  of  Matter.  On  the 
contrary,  I  know  that  nothing  inconsistent  can  exist,  and 
that  the  existence  of  matter  implies  an  inconsistency. 
Farther,  I  know  what  I  mean  when  I  affirm  that  there 
is  a  spiritual  substance  or  support  of  ideas,  that  is,  that 
a  spirit  knows  and  perceives  ideas.  But,  I  do  not  know 
what  is  meant  when  it  is  said  that  an  unperceiving  sub- 
stance hath  inherent  in  it  and  supports  either  ideas  or 
the  archetypes  of  ideas.  There  is  therefore  upon  the 
whole  no  parity  of  case  between  Spirit  and  Matter.'  ^ 

In  the  second  place,(Berkeley  finds  in  Spirit  the  only 
real  cause  or  power.*^  In  this  case  also  we  have  no  *  idea,' 
but  a  *  notion.'  *  Such  is  the  nature  of  Spirit,  or  that 
which  acts,  that  it  cannot  be  of  itself  perceived,  but  only 
by  the  effects  which  it  produceth.  ...  So  far  as  I  can 
see,  the  words,  willj  understanding,  mind,  soul,  spirity  do 
not  stand  for  different  ideas,  or,  in  truth,  for  any  idea 
at  all,  but  for  something  which  is  very  different  from 
ideas,  and  which,  being  an  agent,  cannot  be  like  unto, 
or  represented  by,  any  idea  whatsoever.  Though  it  must 
be  owned  at  the  same  time  that  we  have  some  notion  of 
soul,  spirit,  and  the  operations  of  the  mind,  such  as 
willing,  loving,  hating— inasmuch  as  we  know  or  under- 
stand the  meaning  of  these  words.  I  find  I  can  excite 
ideas  in  my  mind  at  pleasure,  and  vary  and  shift  the  scene 
as  oft  as  I  think  fit.  It  is  no  more  than  willing,  and 
straightway  this  or  that  idea  arises  in  my  fancy  ;  and  by 
the  same  power  it  is  obliterated  and  makes  way  for 
another.  This  making  and  unmaking  of  ideas  doth  very 
properly  denominate  the    mind   active.     Thus   much   is 

^  Works,  i.  449-451. 


I40         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

certain  and  grounded  on  experience  :  but  when  we  talk 
of  unthinking  agents,  or  of  exciting  ideas  exclusive  of 
volition,  we  only  amuse  ourselves  with  words.' Mf  Similarly, 
the  existence  of  other  finite  spirits  is  at  least  a  probable 
inference,  *  if  we  see  signs  and  effects  indicating  distinct 
finite  agents  like  ourselves,  and  see  no  sign  or  symptom 
whatever  that  leads  to  a  rational  belief  of  Matter.'  ^  )  The 
most  convincing  ground  of  belief  in  the  existence  of  our 
fellow-men  is  their  speaking  to  us,  and  we  have  the 
same  ground  for  believing  in  the  existence  of  God,  who 
speaks  to  us  in  the  universal  sense-symbolism  of  Nature. 
The  test  of  reality  is  externality,  in  the  sense  that  the 
ideas  are  produced  in  our  minds  by  no  activity  of  our 
own,  but  by  another  Spirit,  and  produced  in  such  a 
constant  and  uniform  manner  that,  arbitrary  as  the 
connexion  between  them  is,  we  learn  to  predict  what 
will  actually  happen,  and  find  that  we  are  living  in  a 
world  that  is  identical  with,  in  the  sense  of  similar  to, 
that  of  our  fellow-men.  The  significant  and  interpretable 
character  of  the  ideas  presented  to  us  in  sense-experience 
points  to  reason,  as  well  as  will,  in  its  Author.  The 
permanence  and  continuity  that  characterise  our  changing 
experience  find  their  explanation  in  the  reasonable  con- 
stancy of  the  divine  Will  which  is  actively  present  in  it 
all.  The  world  is  a  constant  creation ;  the  infinite 
Spirit  is  ever  speaking  to  the  spirits  of  men.  ^ 

Such,  in  brief  outline,  is  Berkeley's  bold  and  brilliant 
youthful  speculation  as  to  the  nature  of  the  material  world 
and  its  relation  to  man  and  God.  The  religious  interest 
which  inspired  it  finds  its  complete  satisfaction  in  the 
result.  The  great  obstacle  which  had  prevented  man's 
apprehension  of  God  was  independent  Matter.  That 
removed,  sense  is  no  veil  that  obscures  the  vision  of  God, 
but  rather  the  transparent  medium  of  the  divine  self- 
revelation.  *  Spirit  with  spirit  can  meet,'  God  can  speak 
with    man    face    to    face.      With    this   satisfying    result 

1  Principles,  sects.  27,  28.  •  Works,  L  450. 


BERKELEY:    THE  NEW  IDEALISM     141 

Berkeley  seems  to  have  been  content.  Other  interests 
absorbed  his  middle  life — practical  philanthropy  and 
theological  controversy.  These  busy  years  had  indeed 
one  notable  literary  outcome,  the  series  of  seven  Dialogues 
entitled  Alciphron  or  the  Minute  Philosopher^  of  w^hich  it 
is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  they  are  '  more  fitted  than 
any  in  English  literature  to  recall  the  charm  of  Plato  and 
Cicero.'  ^  But  their  philosophical  content  is  unfortunately 
unequal  to  their  literary  merits.  As  a  piece  of  con- 
troversial discussion,  they  suffer  from  the  fatal  defect  of 
unfairness  and  misrepresentation  of  the  positions  w^hich  it 
is  their  aim  to  refute.  Even  Professor  Eraser  admits  that 
Berkeley's  '  natural  impetuosity,  added  to  indignation  on 
account  of  the  exclusive  claim  of  the  "  minute  philosophers  " 
to  free  employment  of  reason  in  religion,  tempt  him  to 
use  language  hardly  consistent  vv^ith  the  philosophical 
temper.  Those  vi^hom  he  charged  with  atheism  were 
professed  theists,  engaged  with  the  important  question  of 
the  nature  and  resources  of  what  was  called  "natural 
religion,"  and  the  duty  of  reason  to  investigate  this  without 
restraint  by  ecclesiastical  or  other  authority.'  ^  Apart 
from  the  merits  of  the  controversy  between  Berkeley  and 
the  deists  of  his  time,  whom  he  identifies  with  atheists, 
and  designates  'minute  philosophers'  because  of  their 
inability  to  take  large  views  of  things,  the  controversy 
itself,  as  it  develops,  belongs  rather  to  the  sphere  of 
theological  apologetics  than  to  that  of  philosophy  proper. 
The  philosophical  interest  culminates  in  the  fourth 
Dialogue,  in  which  the  proof  of  the  divine  existence  is 
found  in  the  language  of  vision.  It  is  significant  that 
Berkeley  not  only  republished  the  Theory  of  Vision  as  an 
appendix  to  the  Dialogues,  but  in  the  following  year 
published  a  Vindication  of  that  theory.  '  Being  persuaded 
that  the  Theory  of  Vision^  annexed  to  The  Minute  Philosopher^ 
affords  to  thinking  men  a  new  and  unanswerable  proof  of 
the  Existence  and  immediate  Operation  of  God,  and  the 
constant  condescending  care  of  His  Providence,  I  think 

*  Fraser,  Berkeley's  Works,  ii,  6.  *  Ibid.,  ii.  375. 


142  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

myself  concerned,  as  well  as  I  am  able,  to  defend  and 
explain  it,  at  a  time  wherein  Atheism  hath  made  a  greater 
progress  than  some  are  willing  to  own,  or  others  to 
believe.'  ^  The  theory  offers,  he  says,  *  a  new  argu- 
ment of  a  singular  nature  in  proof  of  the  immediate 
Care  and  Providence  of  a  God,  present  to  our  minds,  and 
directing  our  actions.'  ^ 

The  Third  Dialogue  is  devoted  to  the  question  of 
the  nature  of  Virtue,  and  is  directed  against  Shaftes- 
bury's theory.  While  the  discussion  is  vitiated  by 
misrepresentation  of  his  opponent"'s  position,  it  supplies 
some  interesting  suggestions  as  to  its  author's  ethical 
views.  It  has  been  said  that  there  is  no  real  connexion 
between  these  and  his  metaphysical  position.  '  Bishop 
Berkeley,'  says  Mr.  Selby-Bigge,  *was  a  most  meta- 
physical person  with  very  interesting  views  on  the  relation 
of  human  and  divine  reason,  which  at  once  suggest  to  us 
consequences  of  the  most  vital  importance  for  morals,  but 
the  ethical  portions  of  his  writings  mijght,  to  all  appear- 
ance, have  been  written  by  Paley.'  ^  (But  Berkeley  has 
himself  suggested  that  his  war  against  abstractions  might 
have  been  carried  into  the  sphere  of  ethics  as  well  as  into 
that  of  natural  philosophy  and  of  metaphysics.  *■  What 
it  is  for  a  man  to  be  happy,  or  an  object  good,  every 
one  may  think  he  knows.  But  to  frame  an  abstract 
idea  of  happiness,  prescinded  from  all  particular  pleasure, 
or  of  goodness  from  everything  that  is  good,  this  is  what 
few  can  pretend  to.  So  likewise  a  man  may  be  just 
and  virtuous  without  having  precise  ideas  of  justice  and 
virtue.  The  opinion  that  those  and  the  like  words  stand 
for  general  notions,  abstracted  from  all  particular  persons 
and  actions,  seems  to  have  rendered  morality  difficult 
and  the  study  thereof  of  less  use  to  mankind.  And 
in  effect  one  may  make  a  great  progress  in  school-ethics 
without  ever  being  the  wiser  or  better  man  for  it,  or 
knowing  how  to  behave  himself  in  the  affairs  of  life 
more  to  the  advantage  of  himself  or  his  neighbours  than 

1  Works,  ii.  379,  380.  2  Works,  ii.  385. 

*  British  Moralists  y  Introd.,  p.  xx. 


BERKELEY:    THE  NEW  IDEALISM     143 

he  did  before.'  ^  )  Although  he  never  carried  out  the 
hint  here  conveyed  of  a  reform  of  the  science  of  ethics 
on  his  own  lines  of  thought  about  external  reality, 
he  did,  in  the  discourse  on  Passive  Obedience^  directed 
apparently  against  Locke's  views  of  Sovereignty  in  his 
Treatise  of  Civil  Government^  investigate  the  relation  of 
this  duty  to  *the  principles  of  the  Law  of  Nature,' 
developing  the  analogy  between  moral  law  and  the  laws 
of  the  divine  government  of  Nature  in  a  striking  and 
suggestive  way. 

The  impressive  and  beautiful  words  with  which 
Berkeley  closes  his  last  philosophical  work  are  singularly 
applicable  to  himself.  '  Truth  is  the  cry  of  all,  but  the 
game  of  a  few.  Certainly,  where  it  is  the  chief  passion, 
it  doth  not  give  way  to  vulgar  cares  and  views ;  nor  is  it 
contented  with  a  little  ardour  in  the  early  time  of  life ; 
active,  perhaps,  to  pursue,  but  not  so  fit  to  weigh  and 
revise.  He  that  would  make  a  real  progress  in  knowledge 
must  dedicate  his  age  as  well  as  youth,  the  later  growth 
as  well  as  first  fruits,  at  the  altar  of  Truth.'  ^  In  the 
comparative  quiet  and  seclusion  of  his  later  years  at 
Cloyne  he  found  time  and  opportunity  to  'weigh  and 
revise '  the  results  of  his  earlier  thinking  in  the  light  of 
past  thought,  the  records  of  which  he  seems  to  have 
studied  with  unabated  ardour.  The  union  in  him  of  the 
practical  with  the  speculative  interest,  as  well  as  the 
intensity  of  his  consciousness  of  the  religious  significance 
of  every  element  and  incident  of  human  life,  is  curiously 
illustrated  in  this  final  work,  published  in  1744,  Uiirty-five 
years  after  the  Essay  on  Vision.  It  is  entitled^*  Sirjs  :  a 
Chain  of  Philosophical  Reflexions  and  Inquiries  concern- 
ing the  Virtues  of  Tar-water  and  divers  other  subjects 
connected  together  and  arising  one  from  another.'  Its 
primary  concerrT^is_with  the  body  and  its_ills,  but  its 
ultimate  cpncern  isjwTtirth^"smiL  <If  the  lute  be  not 
well  tuned,  the  musician  fails  of  his  harmony.     And,  in 

^  Principles^  sect.  loo.  *  Siris,  sect.  368. 


144         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

our  present  condition,  the  operations  of  the  mind  so  far 
depend  on  the  right  tone  or  good  condition  of  its  instru- 
ment, that  anything  which  greatly  contributes  to  preserve 
or  recover  the  health  of  the  Body  is  well  worth  the 
attention  of  the  Mind.  These  considerations  have  moved 
me  to  communicate  to  the  public,  the  salutary  virtues  of 
Tar-water ;  to  which  I  thought  myself  indispensably 
obliged  by  the  duty  every  man  owes  to  mankind.  And, 
as  effects  are  linked  with  their  causes,  my  thoughts  on 
this  low  but  useful  theme  led  to  farther  inquiries,  and 
those  on  to  others  ;  remote  perhaps  and  speculative,  but 
I  hope  not  altogether  useless  or  unentertaining.')  Living, 
he  says,  *in  a  remote  corner  among  poor  neighbours, 
who  for  want  of  a  regular  physician  have  often  recourse 
to  me,  I  have  had  frequent  opportunities  of  trial ' ;  and 
the  result  of  these  trials  of  its  virtues  was  the  conviction 
that  he  had  found  in  this  simple  drug  the  panacea  for  all 
the  bodily  ills  of  men.  The  purpose  of  the  book  is  at 
once  to  describe  the  nature  of  this  panacea  and  to  develop 
the  metaphysical  and  religious  reflections  which  are  sug- 
gested by  the  marvellous  properties  of  a  thing  apparently, 
and  in  itself,  so  simple  and  so  '  low.' 

Professor  Fraser  calls  Siris  'the  most  curious  and  pro- 
found of  Berkeley's  works.'  ^  It  is  the  most  profound  in 
the  sense  that  it  raises  questions  which  had  not  occurred 
to  his  mind  in  the  earlier  works ;  but,  as  the  same  writer 
remarks,  *  the  gold  has  to  be  separated  from  the  dross.'  ^ 
As  the  title  suggests,  the  work  is  rather  a  series  of  *  reflex- 
ions and  inquiries'  than  a  systematic  treatise.  It  is  more 
like  a  series  of  unconnected  notes,  such  as  we  find  in  the 
youthful  Commonplace  Book,  than  a  sustained  philosophi- 
cal argument,  and  it  is  as  difficult  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Cambridge  Platonists  to  extricate  the  author's  own  views 
from  the  mass  of  quotation  and  allusion  to  older  writers 
with  which  its  pages  are  crowded.  If  it  were  not  for  the 
occasional  occurrence  of  a  passage  which  only  Berkeley 
could   have  written,   we    should   be  apt  to  question  the 

'  Works,  iii.  117. 

•  Berkeley,  in  '  Philosophical  Classics,'  p.  198. 


BERKELEY:   THE  NEW  IDEALISM     145 

authorship,  judging  from  the  style  alone.  The  multifari- 
ous reading,  of  which  it  gives  evidence,  is  ill-digested  ; 
the  vievi^s  of  *Platonists,  Pythagoreans,  Egyptians,  and 
Chaldeans'  are  strangely  identified,^  nor  is  there  any 
attempt  to  distinguish  the  views  of  Plato  himself  from 
those  of  the  Neo-Platonists.  There  is  the  old  effort  to 
discredit  Atheism,  by  showing  that  *  modern  Atheism,  be 
it  of  Hobbes,  Spinoza,  Collins,  or  whom  you  will,  is  not 
to  be  countenanced  by  the  learning  and  great  names  of 
antiquity.'^  On  the  other  hand.  Pantheism  and  Mysti- 
cism are  distinguished  from  Atheism,  on  the  ground  that 
*  whoever  acknowledgeth  the  universe  to  be  made  and 
governed  by  an  Eternal  Mind  cannot  be  justly  deemed 
an  Atheist.'  ^  There  is  the  old  hostility  to  '  the  cor- 
puscularian  and  mechanical  philosophy,  which  hath 
prevailed  for  about  a  century.'  'This,  indeed,  might 
usefully  enough  have  employed  some  share  of  the  leisure 
and  curiosity  of  inquisitive  persons.  But  when  it 
entered  the  seminaries  of  learning,  as  a  necessary  ac- 
complishment and  most  important  part  of  education,  by 
engrossing  men's  thoughts,  and  fixing  their  minds  so 
much  on  corporeal  objects,  and  the  laws  of  motion,  it 
hath,  however  undesignedly,  indirectly,  and  by  accident, 
yet  not  a  little,  indisposed  them  for  spiritual,  moral,  and 
intellectual  matters.'  * 

The  general  drift  of  Berkeley's  later  thought,  as 
revealed  in  this  book,  is  clearly  in  the  direction  of  a  more 
transcendental  and  Platonic  form  of  Idealism  than  that 
which  is  unfolded  in  the  Principles.  He  has  come  under 
the  spell  of  Plato,  who  '  had  joined  with  an  imagination 
the  most  splendid  and  magnificent,  an  intellect  not  less 
deep  and  clear,'  ^  '  whose  writings  are  the  touchstone 
of  a  hasty  and  shallow  mind  ;  whose  philosophy  has  been 
the  admiration  of  ages ;  which  supplied  patriots,  magis- 
trates, and  lawgivers  to  the  most  flourishing  States,  as 
well  as  fathers  to  the  Church,  and  doctors  to  the 
schools.'  *     We  find  accordingly  a  new  disparagement  of 

^  Siris,  sect.  362.    "  Ibid.,  sect.  354.    ^  Ibid.,  sect.  352. 
''  Ibid.,  sect.  331.    *  Ibid.,  sect.  360.    ^  Ibid.,  sect.  332. 


146  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

the  senses  and  a  new  exaltation  of  purely  intellectual 
insight.  Sense  is  only  the  first  and  lowest  step  in  the 
ascent  of  the  soul  from  the  world  to  God,  the  meanest 
link  in  the  Golden  Chain  that  unites  the  finite  to  the 
infinite  Spirit.  *  The  perceptions  of  sense  are  gross ; 
but  even  in  the  senses  there  is  a  difference.  Though 
harmony  and  proportion  are  not  objects  of  sense,  yet  the 
eye  and  the  ear  are  organs  which  offer  to  the  mind  such 
materials  by  means  whereof  she  may  apprehend  both  the 
one  and  the  other.  By  experiments  of  sense  we  become 
acquainted  with  the  lower  faculties  of  the  soul ;  and  from 
them,  whether  by  a  gradual  evolution  or  ascent,  we 
arrive  at  the  highest.  Sense  supplies  images  to  memory. 
These  become  subjects  for  fancy  to  work  upon.  Reason 
considers  and  judges  of  the  imaginations.  And  these  acts 
of  reason  become  new  objects  to  the  understanding.  In^ 
this  scale,  each  lower  faculty  is  a  step  that  leads  to  one 
above  it.  And  the  uppermost  naturally  leads  to  the 
Deity  ;  which  is  rather  the  object  of  intellectual  know- 
ledge than  even  of  the  discursive  faculty,  not  to  mention 
the  sensitive.  There  runs  a  Chain  throughout  the  whole 
system  of  beings.  In  this  Chain  one  link  drags  another. 
The  meanest  things  are  connected  with  the  highest.'  ^ 
The  extreme  links  of  this  Chain  are  the  '  grossly  sensible  ' 
and  the  *  purely  intelligible.'  The  earlier  distinction 
between  the  idea  and  the  notion  is  now  developed  into 
the  contrast  between  *  phenomena  '  or  '  appearances  ' 
on  the  one  hand  and  Ideas  (in  the  Platonic  sense)  or 
Reality  on  the  other.  The  senses,  instead  of  being 
regarded  as  the  medium  of  the  self-revelation  of  the 
divine  Spirit  to  the  human,  are  condemned  as  veiling  the 
divine  Reality  from  our  spirits.  The  mind  is  *  depressed 
by  the  heaviness  of  the  animal  nature  to  which  it  is 
chained  ' ;  we  are  '  oppressed  and  overwhelmed  by  the 
senses,'  the  world  of  which  is  a  '  region  of  darkness  and 
dreams.'  (*  Sense  at  first  besets  and  overbears  the  mind. 
The  sensible  appearances  are  all  in  all :  our   reasonings 

*  Siris,  sect.  303. 


BERKELEY:   THE  NEW  IDEALISM     147 

are   employed    about   them  :    our   desires    terminate    in   \ 
them  :    we  look  no  farther   for  realities   or  causes ;    till     j 
Intellect  begins  to  dawn,  and  cast  a  ray  on  this  shadowy    ' 
scene.     We  then   perceive  the  true  principle   of  unity, 
identity,  and  existence.     Those  things  that  before  seemed 
to  constitute  the  whole  of  Being,  upon  taking  an  intel- 
lectual view  of  things,  prove  to  be  but  fleeting  phantoms.'  ^ 

(While  Berkeley's  earlier  view  of  reality,  so  far  at  least 
as  the  external  world  is  concerned,  was  expressed  in  the 
statement  that '  the  esse  of  things  \%percipi^  the  view  which 
we  find  in  Sirh  might  rather  be  expressed  in  the  state- 
ment that  'the  esse  of  things  is  concipi?)  Reality,  being 
rationally  constituted,  can  be  apprehended  only  by 
intellect  or  reason.  (*  We  know  a  thing  when  we  under- 
stand it ;  and  we  understand  it  when  we  can  interpret  or 
tell  what  it  signifies.  Strictly,  the  sense  knows  nothing. 
We  perceive  indeed  sounds  by  hearing,  and  characters  by 
sight.  But  we  are  not  therefore  said  to  understand  them.'  ^ 
*  As  understanding  perceiveth  not,  that  is,  doth  not  hear, 
or  see,  or  feel,  so  sense  knoweth  not  :  and  although 
the  mind  may  use  both  sense  and  fancy,  as  means 
whereby  to  arrive  at  knowledge,  yet  sense  or  soul, 
so  far  forth  as  sensitive,  knoweth  nothing.'  ^j  In  such 
sentences  as  these  we  see  how  Berkeley's  centre  of 
speculative  interest  has  changed  from  the  world  of  the 
senses  to  that  of  intellect  or  reason,  and  yet  how  closely 
his  later  Idealism  is  related  to  his  earlier  doctrine  of 
Immaterialism  ;  how  the  one  is  rather  a  development  than 
a  negation  of  the  other.  Even  in  the  Principles  he  had 
insisted  upon  the  interpretability  of  the  data  of  sensation, 
upon  their  symbolic  or  significant  character,  as  the  feature 
which  makes  science,  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  practical 
conduct  of  life,  on  the  other,  possible  for  man.  Even  in 
the  Principles  he  had  insisted  upon  the  necessity  of  supple- 
menting the  *  idea  '  by  the  *  notion,'  the  perceptual  by  the 
conceptual  apprehension  of  reality,  holding  that  only 
through    such    notions   can    we    apprehend    relations   or 

^  Siris,  sect.  294.        *  Ibid..,  sect.  253.         *  Ibid.,  sect.  305. 


148  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

penetrate  to  spiritual  substance  and  true  causes.  But  his 
early  doctrine  of  Immaterialism,  or  of  the  sensational 
character  of  external  reality,  has  lost  interest  for  him,  in 
view  of  the  higher  truth,  which  now  preoccupies  him, 
of  the  rational  constitution  of  the  universe.  In  a  new 
and  deeper  sense  he  now  holds  that  God  speaks  to  man, 
not  merely  in  the  simple  language  of  Vision  and  of  Sense, 
but  in  the  deeper  and  more  intimate  communion  of  the 
divine  with  the  human  Reason. 


CHAPTER   II 

HUME:  EMPIRICISM  AND  SCEPTICISM 

Hume  is  not  only  the  greatest  English  philosopher  ;  he 
is  also  one  of  the  great  figures  in  English  literature.  In 
his  '  Own  Life  '  he  tells  us  that  he  *  was  seized  very  early 
with  a  passion  for  literature,  which  has  been  the  ruling 
passion  of  my  life,  and  the  great  source  of  my  enjoy- 
ments.' It  was  not  merely  in  the  sphere  of  philosophy 
proper,  but  in  that  of  the  essay  and  of  history,  that  he 
sought  to  gratify  this  passion,  and  as  a  writer  he  is  equally 
successful  in  all  these  spheres.  His  contribution  to  philo- 
sophy was  the  work  of  his  youth,  though  he  revised, 
and  to  some  extent  modified  it  in  later  years  ;  the  real 
occupation  of  these  later  years  was  found  in  the  production 
of  essays  on  political  and  economic  subjects  and  of  his 
History  of  England.  The  revised  statement  of  his  philoso- 
phical opinions  was  confessedly  undertaken  rather  with 
a  view  to  their  more  effective  literary  expression  than 
with  any  purpose  of  serious  modification.  '  I  had  always 
entertained  a  notion,  that  my  want  of  success  in  publish- 
ing the  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  had  proceeded  more 
from  the  manner  than  the  matter,  and  that  I  had  been 
guilty  of  a  very  usual  indiscretion,  in  going  to  the  press 
too  early.  I,  therefore,  cast  the  first  part  of  that  work 
anew  in  the  Enquiry  concerning  Human  Understanding.* 
He  professes,  in  his  Essays,  to  attempt  'a  union  between 
the  learned  and  conversible  worlds,'  and  it  seems  clear 
that  in  philosophy  he  sought  to  effect  the  same  union. 
The  general  verdict  of  posterity,  if  not  that  of  his  own 
contemporaries,  has  been  that  he  succeeded  in  this 
ambition.     The  one  notable  exception  is  the  formidable 

149 


I50  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

dictum  of  Dr.  Johnson,  that  *  his  style  is  not  English  ; 
the  structure  of  his  sentences  is  French.'  It  can  hardly 
be  doubted  that  his  residence  in  France  during  the  three 
years  of  youth  while  he  was  writing  the  Treatise^  and 
his  resulting  familiarity  with  the  French  language  and 
literature,  had  some  influence  upon  his  English  style, 
and  that  this  influence  was  one  of  the  chief  factors  in  his 
education  as  a  writer. 

Perhaps  the  most  competent  German  historian  of  philo- 
sophy has  characterised  Hume  as  *  without  doubt  the 
clearest  and  most  unprejudiced  as  well  as  the  most  compre- 
hensive and  philosophically  the  best  equipped  thinker  whom 
the  English  nation  has  produced.'^  It  is  in  virtue  of  the 
relentless  faithfulness  with  which  he  follows  out  the  logical 
consequences  of  the  empirical  point  of  view  that  we  are 
compelled  to  admit  that  in  the  Treatise  of  Human  Nature 
the  logic  of  empiricism  works  itself  out  to  its  inevitable 
conclusions.  It  would  be  unjust  to  both  Locke  and  Berkeley 
to  say  that  they  stopped  short  of  these  conclusions  from 
theological  or  other  prejudices.  The  truth  is  that  empiricism 
was  only  a  part  of  their  philosophy,  the  other  part  being, 
as  we  have  seen,  of  a  rationalistic  or  idealistic  type  ;  so 
that  we  cannot  describe  the  sceptical  philosophy  of  Hume 
as  the  complete  logical  development  of  the  Lockian  and 
Berkeleyan  philosophy,  but  only  as  the  logical  completion 
of  the  empirical  element  in  the  philosophy  of  his  pre- 
decessors. That  which  had  for  them  been  a  part  becomes 
for  Hume  the  whole:  he  is  an  empiricist  pure  and  simple, 
and  he  shows  us  with  singular  insight  the  ultimate  mean- 
ing and  consequences  of  pure  empiricism.  Locke's  em- 
piricism had  been  limited  to  the  solution  of  the  problem 
of  the  origin  of  the  materials  or  elements  of  knowledge  ; 
it  had  never  occurred  to  him  to  give  a  purely  empirical 
account  of  knowledge  itself,  except  in  so  far  as  he 
thought  that  the  question  of  the  '  original '  of  know- 
ledge had  more  than  a  merely  psychological  and  genetic 

.  '  Windelband,  Geschichte  der  netieren  PAilosophie,  i.  326. 


HUME  151 

significance.  Hume  disallows  the  distinction  between 
knowledge  and  its  materials,  and  seeks  to  give  an 
empirical  derivation  and  explanation  of  knowledge  itself, 
alike  on  its  material  and  on  its  formal  side.  Berkeley 
had  traced  the  content  of  our  knowledge  of  the  material 
world  to  its  origin  in  ideas  or  sensations,  and  had  denied 
the  reality  of  material  substance  and  of  material  cause  ; 
but  it  had  not  occurred  to  him  to  give  an  empirical 
account  of  the  principles  of  substance  and  cause.  With- 
out a  '  notional '  apprehension  of  these  latter  principles, 
knowledge  seemed  to  him  impossible,  and  it  was  in  vindi- 
cation of  the  validity  of  their  true  application  that  he 
sought  to  disprove  their  applicability  to  the  relations  of 
the  data  of  our  sensational  experience  to  one  another. 
Similarly  we  have  seen  that  neither  Locke  nor  Berkeley 
was  a  mere  nominalist  :  nominalism  was  only  a  part  of 
their  theory  of  knowledge  and  of  reality.  For  Hume, 
Berkeley's  doctrine  of  the  invalidity  of  'abstract  ideas' 
is  '  oiie_  ot  the  greatest  and  most  valuable  discoveries  that 
has  been  made  of  late  years  in  the  republic  of  letters.'^  It 
is  for  hfm  the  whole  truth,  and  again  he  shows  what  are  its 
full  consequences.  Once  more,  the  experimental  or  psycho- 
logical method  had  been  the  method  only  of  the  Second 
Book  of  Locke's  Essay  ;  it  was  not  the  method  of  Bock  IV., 
to  which  all  that  precedes  is  really  introductory  and 
subsidiary,  and  in  which  alone  the  solution  of  his  real 
problem  of  the  nature  and  limits  of  human  knowledge  is 
attempted.  Similarly  for  Berkeley  the  experimental  or 
psychological  method  seems  appropriate  to  the  solution  of 
the  problem  of  the  nature  of  that  experience  which  we 
describe  in  abstract  terms  as  knowledge  of  the  material 
world  ;  but  he  regards  that  method  as  inadequate  to  the 
solution  of  the  deeper  problem  of  the  nature  of  that 
spiritual  reality,  divine  and  human,  to  which  he  has 
found  himself  experimentally  forced  to  reduce  material 
reality.  For  Hume  the  experimental  or  psychological 
method  is  equally  applicable  to  all  questions  of  reality  or 

^  Treatise,  bk.  i.  pt.  i.  sect.  7. 


152  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

*  matters  of  fact,'  the  psychological  explanation  is  the  only 
possible  explanation  :  the  sub-title  of  the  Treatise  is  *an 
attempt  to  introduce  the  experimental  Method  of  Reason- 
ing into  Moral  Subjects.' 

The  limited  scope  assigned  to  the  principle  of  empiri- 
cism or  sensationalism  by  Locke  and  Berkeley,  as  contrasted 
with  the  unlimited  scope  assigned  to  that  principle  by 
Hume,  may  be  summarised  in  the  statement  that  while 
his  predecessors  had  no  thought  of  reducing  reason  to 
terms  of  sensation  and  experience,  but  always,  implicitly 
and  explicitly,  assumed  the  distinction  between  these  to 
be  ultimate,  Hnjne  is  g_thorough-going  empiricist,  in  the 
sense  that  he  seeks^to  give  an  empirical  account  or  ex- 
planation oi  all  our  so-called  '  rational '  judgments,  to 
show  that  these  judgments"^e  siniply  im^ression^—apd 
iflgas  associated  by  custom,  expectations  developed  in  us 
by  experience.  The  result  is  that  while  his  predecessors 
assumethe  distinction  between  the  certainties  of  know- 
ledge and  the  probabilities  of  experience,  and  devote 
themselves  to  the  investigation  of  the  nature  and  extent) 
of  human  knowledge,  Hume  sees  in  our  so-called  'know- 
ledge '  only  a  fiction  to  be  accounted  for  in  terms  of  that 
experience  which  is  for  him  the  only  source  of  human 

*  understanding,'  the  only  basis  of  that  probability  which 
supersedes  our  imagined  knowledge  and  certainty.  Locke 
and  Berkeley  had  successively  narrowed  the  range  of 
knowledge.  Locke  had  found  that  there  is  *no  science 
of  bodies ' ;  that,  in  the  strict  sense,  we  have  no  '  know- 
ledge '  of  external  reality  ;  that  our  knowledge  is  either  real 
and  particular  or  general  and  without  real  significance.  But 
that  we  do  know  or  apprehend  truth  with  certainty,  that 
intuition  and  demonstration  are  valid  forms  of  such  certain 
knowledge,  he  had  never  questioned  ;  these  are  essential 
features  in  his  theory  of  knowledge.  Berkeley  had  in-_ 
sisted.  more  strenuously  than  Locke,  upon  reducing  our 
abstractand  general  knowledge  to  concrete  and  particular 
ferms,  or,  in  his  own  terminology,  to  *  Ideis  *1  he  had 
furtRer  reduced  causality,  so  far  as  the  external  world  is 
concerned,    to   sense-symbolism,  and   insisted    upon  the 


HUME  153 

arbitrary  or  the  merely  customary  character  of  all  natural 
relaLioilS,  substitnting  'suggestion  '  for  reason  as  the  organ- 
ising  principle  of  our  sense-experience.  Yet  it  had  not 
occurred  to  him  to  doubt  the  rationality  of  the  principles 
of  substance  and  cause.  In  the  very  arbitrariness  of  the 
relations  of  the  data  of  sensation  he  had  seen  the  evidence 
of  the  rationality  of  their  source  ;  in  the  uniformity  of 
these  relations  he  had  seen  the  expression  of  a  supreme 
cosmic  Reason.  Hume's  denial  of  the  distinction  betv/een 
the  rational  and  the  empirical  elements  in  knowledge  leads 
inevitably  to  the  disintegration  of  know^ledge  ;  certainty  is 
reduced  toprobabilitj^ ;  a  thorough-going  empiricism  is 
found  to  be  the  negation  6t  knowledge,  or  to  result  in 
universal  scepricignT    '  ' 

The  problem  of  knowledge  changes,  in  Hume's  hands, 
from  that  of  Substance  to  that  of  Cause.     Although  the 
problem   of  substance  had   bulked    more  largely  in    the 
discussions  of  his  predecessors,  he  saw  that  the  point  of 
real    strategic    interest   was   the    validity    of    the    causal 
principle.     This  had  been  the  central  constructive  prin- 
ciple   in    the    philosophy  of  both    Locke   and    Berkeley. 
Locke  had  invoked  material  substance  as  the  cause  of  our 
sensations,  and  had  appealed  to  the  same  causal  principle 
in  his  proof  of  the  divine  existence.     Berkeley  had  similarly  - 
sought  to  demonstrate  the  existence  of  God  as  the  cause 
o^  the  iclfeas  of  sensation,  arguing  that  such  a  cause  coulH" 
be  found  only  in  mind,  and  since  it  is  not  found  in  the 
human  mind,  it  follows  that  Supreme  Spirit  is  the  uTriygrsal 
Cause.     Of  causal  agency,  whether  in  ourselves,  in  other 
finite  agents,  or  in  God,  we  have  a  '  notion '  or  rational 
apprehension,  if  not  an  *  idea '  or  empirical  conception. 
Vy-bat^  Hume  asks,  is  the  origin,  and  therefore,  the  warrant 
of  this  causal  principle,  by  the  employment  ot  which  aioTTC 
we  are  enabled  to  transcend  the  particulars  ot  our  percipient 
experience,  and  to  relate"Tt!eIn  in  an  apparent  cosmos  or 
rational  system  f     Is  it  in  reality  a  rational,  or  is  it  a  merely 
empirical  and  customary  relation  ?    On  the  answer  to  this^j 
question,  he  sees,  depends  the  consistency  of  empiricism  as  I 
a  complete  and  self-contained  theory  of  knowledge.  ) 


V 


154         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

There  are  not  many  references  to  other  writers  in 
Hume's  works  ;  but  from  the  few  such  references  which 
do  occur,  as  well  as  from  the  entire  train  of  thought,  it  is 
clear  that  he  finds  his  point  of  departure  in  the  writings 
of  his  English  predecessors.  Although  the  Treatise  was 
written  during  his  residence  in  France,  there  are,  in  the 
metaphysical  part  of  that  work,  few  traces  of  the  influence 
of  French  philosophy,  even  that  of  Descartes.  The  plan 
of  the  first  Book  is  modelled  on  that  of  Locke's  Essay,  the 
four  parts  being  entitled  *  Of  Ideas,'  *  Of  the  Ideas  of 
Space  and  Time,'  '  Of  Knowledge  and  Probability,'  '  Of 
the  Sceptical  and  other  Systems  of  Philosophy.'  Hume's 
object  clearly  is  to  complete,  by  correcting  and  systematis- 
ing,  the  philosophy  of  Locke  and  Berkeley.  Speaking  of 
Locke's  discussion  of  innate  ideas,hesays :  *  A  like  ambiguity 
and  circumlocution  seem  to  run  through  that  philosopher's 
reasonings  on  this  as  well  as  most  other  subjects.'  ^  In  the 
same  work  he  says  of  Berkeley  :  *  Most  of  the  writings  of 
that  very  ingenious  author  form  the  best  lessons  of  scepti- 
cism, which  are  to  be  found  either  among  the  ancient  or 
modern  philosophers,  Bayle  not  excepted.  He  professes, 
however,  in  his  title-page  (and  undoubtedly  with  great 
truth)  to  have  composed  his  book  against  the  sceptics  as 
well  as  against  the  atheists  and  free-thinkers.  But  thatl/ 
all  his  arguments,  though  otherwise  intended,  are,  in  reality, 
merely  sceptical,  appears  from  this,  that  they  admit  of  no 
answer  and  produce  no  conviction.  Their  only  effect  is  to 
cause  that  momentary  amazement  and  irresolution  and 
confusion,  which  is  the  result  of  scepticism.'^  That 
Hume  was  fully  conscious  of  the  novel  and  revolutionary 
character  of  his  own  views,  as  substituting  scepticism, 
the  result  of  a  thorough-going  empiricism,  for  the 
mixture  of  empiricism  and  rationalism  which  he  found 
in  Locke  and  Berkeley,  is  evident  from  a  letter,  written  a 
fortnight  after  the  publication  of  the  Treatise,  when  he 
was  waiting  impatiently  to  learn  its  fate,  in  which  he 
says :    *  Those  who   are  accustomed  to    reflect    on    such 

'  Enquiry  concerning  Human  Understanding,  sect,  ii.,  note. 
*  Ibid.,  sect.  xii.  pt.  i.,  note. 


HUME  155 

abstract  subjects,  are  commonly  full  of  prejudices ;  and 
those  who  are  unprejudiced  are  unacquainted  with  meta- 
physical reasonings.  My  principles  are  so  remote  from 
all  the  vulgar  sentiments  on  the  subject,  that  were  they  to 
take  place,  they  would  produce  almost  a  total  alteration 
in  philosophy  ;  and  you  know,  revolutions  of  this  kind  are 
not  easily  brought  about.'  ^ 

The  determination  of  Hume's  precise  position  in  philo- 
sophy is  rendered  much  more  difficult  by  the  fact  that  he 
has  presented  his  views  in  two,  considerably  divergent, 
forms  :  first  in  the  Treatise^  and  later  in  the  two  Enquiries. 
In  an  *  advertisement '  prefixed  to  the  posthumous  edition 
of  the  collected  Essays,  he  repudiates  the  Treatise  as  a 
*  juvenile  work,  which  the  Author  never  acknowledged,' 
and  desires  that  henceforth  '  the  following  Pieces  may 
alone  be  regarded  as  containing  his  philosophical  senti- 
ments and  principles.'  In  this  work,  he  says, '  some  negli- 
gences in  his  former  reasoning  and  more  in  the  expression, 
are,  he  hopes,  corrected.'  In  a  letter  to  Gilbert  Elliot  he 
says  :  *  I  believe  the  Philosophical  Essays  contain  every- 
thing of  consequence  relating  to  the  understanding,  which 
you  would  meet  with  in  the  Treatise  ;  and  I  give  you  my 
advice  against  reading  the  latter.  By  shortening  and 
simplifying  the  questions,  I  really  render  them  much 
more  complete.  Addo  dum  minuo.  The  philosophical 
principles  are  the  same  in  both  ;  but  I  was  carried  away 
by  the  heat  of  youth  and  invention  to  publish  too  precipi- 
tately. So  vast  an  undertaking,  planned  before  I  was 
one-and-twenty,  and  composed  before  twenty-five,  must 
necessarily  be  very  defective.  I  have  repented  my  haste  a 
hundred,  and  a  hundred  times.' ^  In  another  letter  he 
confesses  *a  very  great  mistake  in  conduct,  viz.  my 
publishing  at  all  the  "  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,"  a 
book  which  pretended  to  innovate  in  all  the  sublimest 
paths  of  philosophy,  and  which  I  composed  before  I  was 
five-and-twenty  ;  above  all,  the  positive  air  which  prevails 

^  Burton's  Life  of  Hume,  i.  105.  '  Ibid.,  i.  337. 


iS6         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

in  that  book,  and  which  may  be  imputed  to  the  ardour 
of  youth,  so  much  displeases  me,  that  I  have  not  patience 
to  review  it.  But  what  success  the  same  doctrines,  better 
illustrated  and  expressed,  may  meet  with,  adhuc  sub  judice 
lis  est:  1- 

While  no  one  will  hesitate  to  accept  Hume's  estimate 
of  the  literary  superiority  of  the  Enquiries^  it  is  impossible 
to  follow  his  advice,  and  to  substitute  the  Enquiries  for  the 
Treatise.  The  *  corrections '  which  the  author  himself 
acknowledges  he  has  made  aiFect  the  doctrine  too  vitally, 
at  several  points,  to  warrant  us  in  accepting  the  later  as  the 
equivalent  of  the  earlier  workl"  Mr.  Selby-Bigge  speaks 
of  *  the  lower  philosophic  standard '  of  the  first  Enquiry, 
and  attributes  this  to  the  avoidance  of  difficulties  which 
would  disturb  unnecessarily  the  confidence  of  ordinary 
opinion,  and  especially  to  the  avoidance  of  '  the  general 
question  of  the  relation  of  knowledge  and  reality.'  In  the 
second  Enquiry,  in  particular,  he  detects  '  a  very  remark- 
able change  of  tone  or  temper,  which,  even  more  than 
particular  statements,  leads  him  to  suppose  that  the  system 
of  Morals  in  the  Enquiry  is  really  and  essentially  different 
from  that  in  the  Treatise.'  ^  But  I  cannot  help  agreeing 
with  Grimm  ^  that,  even  in  the  first  Enquiry,  the  modifica- 
tions of  view  are  of  essential  importance,  and  with  Pro- 
fessor Campbell  Fraser  that  while  in  the  Treatise  we  have 
^  Hume's  statement  of  scepticism  as  the  inevitable  conse- 
quence of  the  empirical  principles  which  he  has  adopted, 
in  the  Enquiry  we  have  his  'sceptical  solution  of  sceptical 
doubts.'  *  While  the  Treatise  is  undoubtedly  the  more  im- 
portant work,  and  *  to  ignore  it '  would  be,  as  Mr.  Selby- 
Bigge  says,  *  to  deprive  Hume  of  his  place  among  the 
great  thinkers  of  Europe,'  to  ignore  the  Enquiry  would  be 
to  neglect  the  modifications  which  later  reflection,  and  not 
mere  considerations  of  literary  effect  or  of  popularity,  in- 
duced Hume  to  make  upon  the  earlier  statement   of  his 

*  Burton's  Lt/e,  i.  98. 

'  Introd.  to  edition  of  EtKfuiries,  p.  xxiii. 

'  Zur  Geschichle  des  Erkenntnissproblems,  pp.  57 ! -596- 

*  Introd.  to  Locke's  Essay,  p.  cxxxviii. 


HUME  157 

philosophy.  If  the  later  statement  is  characterised  by  less 
'  positiveness '  or  confidence  of  tone,  it  is  at  the  same 
time  the  result  of  a  new  effort  to  deduce,  from  the  nega- 
tions from  which  escape  is  still  regarded  as  impossible, 
conclusions  less  bewildering  to  the  human  mind. 

Hume  narrows  the  meaning  of  the  term  *  idea '  still 
further  than  Berkeley  had  done,  and  claims  to  *  restore 
the  word  to  its  original  sense,  from  which  Mr.  Locke 
had  perverted  it,  in  making  it  stand  for  all  our  perceptions,*  '^ 
by  distinguishing  '  ideas  *  from  '  impressions,'  and  includ- 
ing under  the  latter  term  *  all  our  sensations,  passions,  and 
emotions,  as  they  make  their  first  appearance  in  the  soul,' 
under  ideas  '  the  faint  images  of  these  in  thinking  and  •  . 
reasoning.'  'The  difference  betwixt  these  consists  in  the 
degrees  of  force  and  liveliness,  with  which  they  strike 
upon  the  mind,  and  make  their  way  into  our  thought  or 
consciousness.'  *  By  the  term  of  impression,'  he  says,  '  I 
would  not  be  understood  to  express  the  manner,  in  which 
our  lively  perceptions  are  produced  in  the  soul,  but  merely 
the  perceptions  themselves.'  These  impressions  and  ideas 
are  either  simple  or  complex  ;  and  while  the  complex 
ideas  are  not  in  all  cases  the  exact  copies  of  our  complex 
impressions,  'after  the  most  accurate  examination,  of 
which  I  am  capable,  I  venture  to  affirm,'  says  Hume,  *^ 
*  that  the  rule  here  holds  without  any  exception,  and  that 
every  simple  idea  has  a  simple  impression,  which  resembles 
it,  and  every  simple  impression  a  correspondent  idea.  .  .  . 
But  if  any  one  should  deny  this  universal  resemblance,  I 
know  no  way  of  convincing  him,  but  by  desiring  him 
to  show  a  simple  impression,  that  has  not  a  correspondent 
idea,  or  a  simple  idea,  that  has  not  a  correspondent  im- 
pression. If  he  does  not  answer  this  challenge,  as  'tis 
certain  he  cannot,  we  may  from  his  silence  and  our 
own  observation  establish  our  conclusion.'  The  thesis 
of  empiricism  or  sensationalism  accordingly  assumes  the 
form,  '  That  all  our  simple  ideas  in  their  first  appearance  *^^ 
are  derived  from  simple  impressions,  which  are  corre- 
spondent  to  them,  and  which    they  exactly    represent.' 


iS8         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

The  philosophical  significance  of  this  thesis  is  developed 
in  the  sequel  of  the  argument,  both  in  the  Treatise  and 
in    the    Enquiry^   and    is   thus    summarised    in    the   latter 
work :    '  Here,   therefore,    is   a    proposition,    which    not 
only  seems,   in   itself,  simple  and   intelligible ;  but,   if  a 
proper  use  were  made  of  it,  might  render  every  dispute 
equally  intelligible,  and  banish  all  that  jargon,  which  has 
so  long  taken  possession  of  metaphysical  reasonings,  and 
drawn   disgrace   upon    them.  .  .  .  When    we   entertain,  \ 
therefore,    any    suspicion    that    a    philosophical    term    is ' 
employed    without  any  meaning  or  idea   (as  is  but  too 
frequent),  we  need   but  enquire,  from  what  impression   is 
that  supposed  idea   derived?     And   if  it  be   impossible   to 
assign  any,  this  will  serve  to  confirm  our  suspicion.     By  \ 
bringing   ideas  into  so  clear  a  light  we  may  reasonably  j 
hope  to  remove  all  dispute,  which  may  arise,  concerning-/ 
their  nature  and  reality.'  ^ 

In  the  Treatise  Hume  further  distinguishes  impressions  C^ 
of  sensation  from  those  of  reflexion,  and  points  out  an 
important  difference  in  their  origins,  which  leads  to  a 
modification  of  the  general  thesis  as  to  the  relation  of 
\/ideas  to  impressions.  *The  first  kind,'  he  says,  *  arises 
in  the  soul  originally,  from  unknown  causes.  The  second 
is  derived  in  a  great  measure  from  our  ideas,  and  that 
in  the  following  order.  An  impression  first  strikes  upon 
the  senses,  and  makes  us  perceive  heat  or  cold,  thirst  or  ^ 
hunger,  pleasure  or  pain  of  some  kind  or  other.  Of  this 
impression  there  is  a  copy  taken  by  the  mind,  which 
remains  after  the  impression  ceases ;  and  this  we  call  an 
idea.  This  idea  of  pleasure  or  pain,  when  it  returns 
upon  the  soul,  produces  the  new  impressions  of  desire  and 
aversion,  hope  and  fear,  which  may  properly  be  called  im- 
pressions of  reflexion,  because  derived  from  it.  .  .  .  So 
that  the  impressions  of  reflexion  are  only  antecedent  to  their 
correspondent -ideas  ;  but  posterior  to  those  of  sensation,  and 
derived  from  them.'  ^  These  *  impressions  of  reflexion  '  he 
otITeT  w  isejlesLl  ities~as  '  passions,  desires,  and  emotions.'   ^^ 

^  Enquiry,  sect.  ii.  *  Treatise,  bk.  i.  pt.  i.  sect.  2. 


HUME  159 

He  also  distinguishes  ideas  of  nieinQaL_from  those  of  *^ 
imagjnaHSrtr — 1«— rile'^se  of  memory,  the  idea  *  retains  a 
considerable  degree  of  its  first  vivacity  [as  an  impression], 
and  is  somewhat  intermediate  between  an  impression  and 
an  idea';  in  the  case  of  imagination,  *  it  entirely  loses 
that  vivacity,  and  is  a  perfect  idea.'  Moreover,  *the 
imagination  is  not  restrained  to  the  same  order  and  form 
witiLlhe  original  impressions  ;  while  the  memory  is  in  a 
manner  tied^Sown  in  that  respect,  without  any  power  of 
variation,'  its  peculiar  function  being  *  not  to  preserve 
the  simple  ideas,  but  their  order  and  position.'^  The 
freedom  of  the  imagination  in  the  separation  and  com- 
bination of  ideas  is,  however,  limited,  and  a  certain 
uniformity  secured,  by  a  'uniting  principle '_gr' bond 
of  uaian!,  among  ideas — '  a  gentle  force,  which  com- 
monly prevails,'  and  is  the  substitute  in  the  imagination 
for  'that  inseparable  connexion,  by  which  they  are 
united  in  our  memory.'  '  Here  is  a  kind  of  attraction, 
which  in  the  mental  world  will  be  found  to  have  as  extra- 
ordinary effects  as  in  the  natural,  and  to  show  itself  in  as 
many  and  as  various  forms.'  The  'principles  of_as§pcia-^. 
tion  he  finds  to  be  Resemblance,  Contiguity  in  time  or 
placga.and  Causation  ;  and  these  principles  of  association 
become  for  hinT  the  chief  factors  in  the  explanation  of 
our  so-called  '  knowledge  '  of  reality. 

Ideas  may  be  related  to  one  another  either  '  naturally,' 
according  to  the  principles  of  association  just  named,  or 
'  philosophically,'  that  is,  scientifically,  according  to  the 
different  ways  in  which  we  see  fit  to  compare  them. 
These_^hilosophical  relations  are  seven  in  number,  ^ 
nameljr,  resemblance,  identity,  space  and  time,  quantity 
or  num^er^degrees  in  quality,  contrariety  (existence  and 
non'^exisfelice),  and  causation.  Of  four  of  these  relations, 
namely,  resemblance,  contrariety,  degrees  in  quality,  and 
proportions  in  quantity  or  number,  we  have  certain 
knowledge  ;  the  other  three,  namely,  identity,  situations 
in    time   and    place,   and    causation,    are    cases    of  mere 

^  Treatise,  bk.  i.  pt.  i.  sect.  3. 


i6o         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

probability.  In  the  former,  the  relation  '  depends  solely 
upon  ideas,'  and  accordingly  is  *  the  foundation  of 
science ' ;  in  the  latter  it  '  depends  not  upon  the  idea, 
and  may  be  absent  or  present  even  while  that  remains  the 
same.'  In  the  Enquiry  this  8istincti^n_is_statei_as  one 
between  *  relations  of  ideas '  and  '  matters  of  fact.*  ^ 

^Hume's  problem  is,  like  Locke's,  to  determine  the 
nature  and  validity  of  our  reasonings  about  matters  of 
fact,  or,  in  his  ow^n  language,  the  relation  between  ideas 
and  impressions.  What,  he  asks,  is  the  validity  of  any 
'  conclusion  beyond  the  impressions  of  our  senses  ? ' 
*  What  is  the  nature  of  that  evidence  which  assures  us  of 
any  real  existence  and  matter  of  fact,  beyond  the  present 
testimony  of  our  senses,  or  the  records  of  our  memory  ? '  ^ 
^Strictly,  it  is  only  in  the  case  of  causation  that  we  can  be 
said  to  *  reason '  about  matters  of  fact,  since  only  in  that 
case  does  the  mind  *  go  beyond  what  is  immediately 
present  to  the  senses,  either  to  discover  the  real  existence 
or  the  relations  of  objects.'  Our  predication  of  the 
invariableness  of  the  relation  of  identity  or  of  the  situa- 
tion of  the  object  in  space  or  time  will  be  found  to  be  > 
really  based  on  the  relation  of  cause  and  effect.  What,  "^ 
then,  is  the  nature  of  the  causal  inference  ? 

That  it  is  not  an  *  inference '  in  the  strict  sense  of  a 
conclusion  for  which  we  can  give  rational  grounds,  is 
brought  out  more  clearly  in  the  Enquiry^  than  in  the 
Treatise.  In  the  first  place,  he  argues  that  ,^  the  know- 
ledge of  this  relation  is  not,  in  any  instance,  attained  by, 
reasonings  a  priori^  but  arises  entirely  from  experience,*^ 
since  *  no  object  ever  discovers,  by  the  qualities  which 
appear  to  the  senses,  either  the  causes  which  produced  it, 
or  the  effects  which  will  arise  from  it.'  'The  mind  can 
never  possibly  find  the  effect  in  the  supposed  cause,  by  the 
most  accurate  scrutiny  and  examination.  For  the  effect 
is  totally  different  from  the  cause,  and  consequently  can 
never  be  discovered  in  it.'     As  Berkeley  had  argued,  the 

*  Sect.  iv.  pt.  i.  •  Enquiry,  sect.  iv.  pt.  i.  '  3id.t  sect.  iv.     , 


HUME  i6i 

connexion  between  causes  and  effects  is  arbitrary,  not 
rationally  necessary.  In  the  second  place,  even  experi- 
ence cannot  be  the  basis  of  an  inference  to  the  future. 
'For  all  inferences  from  experience  suppose,  as  their 
foundation,  that  the  future  will  resemble  the  past,  and 
that  similar  powers  will  be  conjoined  with  similar  sensible 
qualities.' 

The  empirical  derivation  of  the  idea  of  causal  con- 
nexion, the  reduction  of  it  to  its  origin  in  impression,  is 
traced  much  more  carefully  in  the  Treatise.  Looking  for 
the  impressional  basis  in  the  relation  of  the  objects  con- 
cerned, Hume  finds  that  objects  causally  related  are  always 
( I )  contiguous,  (2)  successive  to  one  another.  These  re- 
lations alone,  however,  are  not  sufficiehf ;  an  object  may 
be  contiguous  and  successive  to  another  without  being 
the  effect  of  the  latter.  He  finds  (3)  a  necessary  connexion 
between  the  objects.  To  what  impression  can  this  idea 
be  traced  ?  The  essence  of  the  causal  relation  being  the 
connexion  of  a  present  impression,  or  of  a  past  impression 
retained  in  memory,  with  an  idea  of  the  imagination,  the 
problem  is  to  account  for  the  transition  or  *  inference '  from , 
the  impression  to  the  idea,  and  for  the  nature  and  qualities 
of  the  idea  which  entitle  it  to  the  name  of  *  belief.'  The 
transition  or  inference  is  not  to  be  accounted.  Jicy  by  any 
peculiar  quality  in  the  object  pefceTved,  by  any_new  or 
unique  sense-inipression.  What  is  essehtTal  is  tlie  regularity 
of  ^he  conTiguity  and  succession  of  the  impressions,  their 

*  constant  conjunction.'  We  find,  as  a  matter  of  ex- 
perienceTTKat"^ like  objects  have  always  been  placed  in 
like  relations  of  contiguity  and  succession,'  and  this  con- 
stant conjunction  in  the  past  leads  us  to  expect  the  same 
constant  conjunction  in  the  future.  The  perception  of 
the  flame  suggests  the  idea  of  its  constant  concomitant, 
heat.  The  union  of  the  present  impression  with  the 
idea  of  the  other  impression  which  has  constantly  accom- 
panied it  in  our  past  experience  is  a  case  of  association. 

*  Reason  can  never  show  us  the  connexion  of  one  object 
with  another,  tho'  aided  by  experience,  and  the  observa- 
tioii  of  their  constant  conjunction  in  all  past  instances. 

L 


i62         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

When  the  mind,  therefore,  passes  from  the  idea  or  im- 
pression of  one  object  to  the  idea  or  beh'ef  of  another, 
it  is  not  determined  by  reason,  but  by  certain  principles, 
which  associate  together  the  ideas  of  these  objects,  and 
unite  them  in  the  imagination.  Had  ideas  no  more  union 
in  the  fancy  than  objects  seem  to  have  to  the  understand- 
ing, we  could  never  draw  any  inference  from  causes  to 
effects,  nor  repose  belief  in  any  matter  of  fact.  The 
inference,  therefore,  depends  solely  on  the  union  of 
ideas.  .  .  .  Thus  tho'  causation  be  a  philosophical  relation, 
as  implying  contiguity,  succession,  and  constant  conjunc- 
tion, yet  *tis  only  so  far  as  it  is  a  natural  relation,  and 
produces  an  union  among  our  ideas,  that  we  are  able  to 
reason  upon  it,  or  draw  any  inference  from  it.'  ^ 

While  the  repetition  of  the  same  impressions  in  the 
same  relation  to  one  another  does  not,  in  a  sense,   add 
anything  to  our  experience,  and  would   not   afford   the 
basis  of  a  rational  inference  which  is  not  already  afforded 
by  the  first  instance  of  the  related  impressions,  yet  Hume 
finds  that  the  repetition  does  *  produce  a  new  impression, 
and  by  that  means  the  idea,  which  I  at  present  examine. 
For_  after   a    frequent    repetition,  I    find,  that  upon  the] 
appearance  of  one  of  the  objects,  the  mind  is  det ermine cV\^ 
by  custom  to  consider  its  usual  attendant,  and  to  consider^ 
it  in  a  stronger  light  upon  account  of  its  relation  to  thej 
first  object.      'Tis  this  impression,  then,  or  determination^ 
which   affords  me  the   idea  of  necessity.'     The  seat   of  i/^ 
necessity  is  in  the  mind,  not  in  the  object.     'Either  we 
have  no  idea  of  necessity,  or   necessity  is  nothing   but 
that  determination  of  the  thought  to  pass  from  causes  to 
effects,   and    from    effects  to  causes,    according   to    their 
experienced  union.'     The  distribution    of  the  objective!/ 
and  subjective  factors  in   the  process  is  admirably  sum- 
marised in  the  statement  *  that  objects  bear  to  each  other 
the  relations  of  contiguity  and  succession  ;  that  like  ob- 
jects may   be  observ'd  in  several  instances  to  have  like 
relations ;  and  that  all  this  is  independent  of,  and  ante- 

^  Treatise,  bk.  i.  pt.  iii.  sect.  6. 


HUME  163 

cedent  to  the  operations  of  the  understanding.  But  if 
we  go  any  farther,  and  ascribe  a  power  or  necessary  con- 
nexion to  these  objects ;  this  is  what  we  can  never 
observe  in  them,  but  must  draw  the  idea  of  it  from  what 
we  feel  internally  in  contemplating  them.'  ^ 

The  resulting  belief  differs  from  other  ideas  simply  in 
the  manner  in  which  it  is  conceived  ;  it  is  only  *  an 
additional  force  and  vivacity'  that  'distinguishes  the. ideas 
of_tiie  judgment  from  the  fictions  of  the  imagination.'  A 
belief  may  therefore  be  defined  as  '  a  lively  idea  relatedTo 
or  associated  with  a  present  impression';  and  it  derives 
its  additional  force  and  vivacity  from  the  impression  with 
which  it  is  associated.  Resemblance  or  contiguity  may 
lend  an  added  strength  to  the  association  ;  education  or 
passion  may  have  the  same  influence  as  constant  conjunc- 
tion. But,  in  any  case,  belief  is  a  matter  of  feeling,  not*-^ 
of^jatipnal  insight.  *  Thus  all  probable  reasoning  is  ^ 
nothing  but  a  species  of  sensation.  'Tis  not  solely  in 
poetry  and  music,  we  must  follow  our  taste  and  sentiment, 
but  likewise  in  philosophy.  When  I  am  convinced  of 
any  principle,  'tis  only  an  idea,  which  strikes  more 
strongly  upon  me.  When  I  give  the  preference  to  one 
set  of  arguments  above  another,  I  do  nothing  but  decide 
from  my  feeling  concerning  the  superiority  of  their  y 
influence.  Objects  have  no  discoverable  connexion 
together ;  nor  is  it  from  any  other  principle  but  custom 
operating  upon  the  imagination,  that  we  can  draw  any 
inference  from  the  appearance  of  one  to  the  existence  of 
another.'^  'To  consider  the  matter  aright,  reason  is 
nothing  but  a  wonderful  and  unintelligible  instinct  in  our 
souls,  which  carries  us  along  a  certain  train  of  ideas,  and 
endows  them  with  particular  qualities,  according  to  their 
particular  situations  and  relations.'  ^ 

Hume  concludes  his  account  of  causation  by  offering 
a  few  general  *  rules  by  which  to  judge  of  causes  and 
effects.'  In  these  rules  he  anticipates,  in  a  rather 
remarkable  way,  the  later  methods  of  inductive  reason- 

^  Treatise,  bk.  L  pt.  iii.  sect.  14.  *  Ibid.,  bk.  i.  pt.  iii.  sect.  8. 

'  Ibid;  bk.  i.  pt.  iii.  sect.  16. 


1 64         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

ing,  as  formulated  by  Mill  and  others,  but  he  states 
them  in  the  most  summary  fashion,  concluding  :  '  Here 
is  all  the  logic  I  think  proper  to  employ  in  my  reason- 
ing ;  and  perhaps  even  this  was  not  very  necessary,  but 
might  have  been  supply'd  by  the  natural  principles  of 
our  understanding.  Our  scholastic  headpieces  and  logi- 
cians shovi^  no  such  superiority  above  the  mere  vulgar  in 
their  reason  and  ability,  as  to  give  us  any  inclination  to 
imitate  them  in  delivering  a  long  system  of  rules  and 
precepts  to  direct  our  judgment,  in  philosophy.  All  the 
rules  of  this  nature  are  very  easy  in  their  invention,  but 
extremely  difficult  in  their  application  ;  and  even  ex- 
perimental philosophy,  which  seems  the  most  natural  and 
simple  of  any,  requires  the  utmost  stretch  of  human 
judgment.'  ^ 

The  problem  of  Substance  is  for  Hume,  as  we  have 
seen,  a  minor  one,  as  compared  with  the  central  problem 
of  Causation  ;  and  is  dealt  with  only  in  the  Treatise.^  But 
the  discussion  is  no  less  subtle  than  the  more  elaborate 
treatment  of  Causation.  First,  as  regards  material  sub- 
stance, or  the  'existence  of  body,'  the  question  is  not,  he 
says,  *  Whether,  there  be  body  or  not  ? '  but '  What  causes 
induce_  us_  to.  Jjelieve- i»-tlie  existence  of  body?'  This 
question  breaks  up  into  two:  'Why  we  attribute  a' 
continued  existence  to  objects,  even  when  they  are  not 
prese^nt  to  the  senses ;  and  why  we  suppose  them  to  havet/" 
an  existence  distinct  from  the  mind  and  pcrQeption.* 
These  two  questions  are  so  intimately  connected  that 
*  the  decision_of  the_one_ question  decides  the  other ' :  it 
the  objects  oif  perception  have  a  continued  existence, 
they  have  also  an  independent  existence,  and  conversely. 
Hume  agrees  with  Berkeley  that  neither  in  perception  nor 
in  reason  do  we  find  any  grounds  for  belief  in  the  con- 
tinuous or  independent  existence  of  material  things  :  for 
us  their  e$ie  \%  perci^.  That  belief,  therefore,  he -concludes, 
must  be  the  product  of  the  imagination.     The  imagination 

'  Treatise,  bk.  L  pt.  iii.  sect.  15.  ^  Bk.  i.  pt.  iv.  sect.  2. 


HUME  165 

is  stimulated  to  this  activity  by  two  characteristics  which 
belong  to  the  objects  of  perception,  their  constancy  and 
their  coherence  (or  the  regularity  of  their  changes). 
Observing  these  characteristics,  we  imagine  that  to  exist 
continuously  which  appears  to  our  senses  to  be  subject  to 
interruption  and  to  change.  '  The  imagination,  when  set 
into  any  train  of  thinking,  is  apt  to  continue,  even  when 
its  object  fails  it,  and  like  a  galley  put  in  motion  by  the 
oars,  carries  on  its  course  without  any  new  impulse,'  and 
this  tendency  of  the  imagination  '  makes  us  easily  enter- 
tain this  opinion  of  the  continued  existence  of  body.' 
What  we  have  been  accustomed  to  find  constantly 
repeated  in  the  same  way  we  soon  come  to  regard,  not  as 
similar  in  spite  of  its  diiference,  but  as  numerically  the 
same.  The  identity  of  the  object  is  an  illusion  of  the^ 
imagination,  which  is  misled  by  the  similarity  of'  an( 
interrupted  succession  of  related  objects  to  uninterrupted; 
succession.  'A  succession  of  related  objects  ...  is 
considered  with  the  same  smooth  and  uninterrupted 
progress  of  the  imagination,  as  attends  the  view  of  the 
same  invariable  object.  .  .  .  The  thought  slides  along  the 
succession  with  equal  facility  as  if  it  considered  only  one 
object ;  and  therefore  confounds  the  succession  with  the 
identity.'  To  overcome  the  contradiction  between  the 
supposed  identity  and  the  actual  interruption  or  succession, 
*  we  disguise,  as  much  as  possible,  the  interruption,  or 
rather  remove  it  entirely, by  supposing  that  these  interrupted 
perceptions  are  connected  by  a  real  existence,  of  which 
we  are  insensible.'  Hence  the  philosophical  hypothesis 
of  *  the  double  existence  of  perception  and  objects  ;  which 
pleases  our  reason,  in  allowing,  that  our  dependent  per- 
ceptions are  interrupted  and  different  ;  and  at  the  same 
time  is  agreeable  to  the  imagination,  in  attributing  a  con- 
tinued existence  to  something  else,  which  we  call  objects.' 
This  is,  however,  but  *  a  new  fiction,'  '  only  a  palliative 
remedy,'  which  *  contains  all  the  difficulties  of  the  vulgar 
system,  with  some  others,  that  are  peculiar  to  itself.' 
While  the  illusion  of  the  popular  imagination  is  inevitable, /^^ 
that  of  the  philosophical  imagination  is  superfluous  and, 


1 66         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

instead  of  substituting  a  sounder  view,  is  a  relapse  into 
the  old  contradiction,  which  Berkeley  has  exposed,  of 
distinguishing  the  object  as  existent  from  the  object  of 
perception. 

The  philosophical  dngma^nf  spi'rJtiLal  substance  is,  Hume 
finds,  equalTylndefensible  with  that  of  material  substance. 
His  challenge  to  those  who  *  imagme  we  are  every  moment 
intimately  conscious  of  what  we  call  our  self  '  is,  as  usual, 
that  they  point  out  the  impression  from  which  this  idea  is 
derived.  *  But  self .  or  person  is  not  any  one  irnpression, 
but  that  to  which  our  several  impressions  and  ideas  are 
supposed  to  lave  reference.  If  any  impression  gives  rise 
to  the  idea  of  self,  that  impression  must  continue  invariably 
the  same,  thro'  the  whole  course  of  our  lives  ;  since  self  is 
supposed  to  exist  after  that  manner.  But  there  is  no  im- 
pression constant  and  invariable.'  All  that  we  find  in 
our  conscious  experience  is  a  succession  of  particular,  ever- 
changing  perceptions, — impressions  and  ideas.  *  For  my 
part,  when  I  enter  most  intimately  into  what  I  call  myself^ 
I  always  stumble  on  some  particular  perception  or  other, 
of  heat  or  cold,  light  or  shade,  love  or  hatred,  pain  or 
pleasure.  I  never  can  catch  myself  2X  any  time  without  a 
perception,  and  never  can  observe  anything  but  the  per- 
ception.'  Men  may  call  themselves  persons,  but  ijK 
reality  '  they  are  nothing  but  a  bundle  or  collejction  of 
different  perceptions,  which  succeed  each  other  with  an 
inconceivable  rapidity,  and  are  in  a  perpetual  flux  and 
movement.  .  .  .  The  mind  is  a  kind  of  theatre,  where 
several  perceptions  successively  make  their  appearance  ; 
pass,  re-pass,  glide  away,  and  mingle  in  an  infinite  variety 
of  postures  and  situations.  There  is  properly  no  simplicity 
in  it  at  one  time,  nor  identity  in  differejit ;  whatever 
natural  propension  we 'may  have  to  imagine  that  simplicity 
and  identity.  The  comparison  of  the  theatre  must  not 
mislead  us.  They  are  the  successive  perceptions  only, 
that  constitute  the  mind  ;  nor  have  we  the  most  distant 
notion  of  the  place,  where  these  scenes  are  represented, 
or  of  the  materials,  of  which  it  is  composed.'  The 
explanation  of  the  illusion  of  personal  identity  is  the  same 


HUME  167 

as  in  the  case  of  that  of  material  substance.  In  the  one 
case  as  in  the  other,  a  variable  and  interrupted  existence 
is  mistaken  by  the  imagination  for  an  invariable  and  un- 
interrupted existence ;  related  objects  are  mistaken, 
because  related,  for  identical  objects.  *  Identity  is  nothing 
really_belflngiiig^-toJt.hese  different  perceptions,  and  uniting 
them  togetherjbut  is  merely  a  qijiaTrty,~  which  we.  attri- 
bute to  them^Decause  of  the  union  of  their  ideas  in  the 
imagination,  vi^hen  w^e  reflect  upon  them.  .  .  .  Our  notions 
of  personal  identity  proceed  entirely  from  the  smooth  and 
uninterrupted  progress  of  the  thought  along  a  train  of 
connected  ideas.' -"^ 

The  difficulty  immediately  suggested  by  this  account  of 
the  genesis  of  the  idea  of  personal  identity  is,  How  can  a 
series  of  percepdgnsjthus  remember  th.e  preceding  and 
relate^them  causally  to  the  present  perceptions  ?  The 
inadequacy  of  tKe^afisTftlCllVB'pSfff  ofTHsrttleory,  whether 
on  this  or  some  other  ground,  seems  to  have  forced  itself 
upon  Hume  himself,  for  in  the  Appendix,  which  he  added 
in  the  following  year  to  the  third  volume  of  the  Treatise^  he 
says  :  *  Upon  a  more  strict  review  of  the  section  con- 
cerning/)i?r5(7«a/  identity  J  I  find  myself  involved  in  such  a 
labyrinth,  that,  I  must  confess,  I  neither  know  how  to 
correct  my  former  opinions,  nor  how  to  render  them  con- 
sistent.' So  far  as  the  negative  part  of  his  argument  is 
concerned,  he  is  still  satisfied  with  it.  *  But  having  thus 
loosened  all  our  particular  perceptions,  when  I  proceed  to 
explain  \the  principle  of  connexion,  which  binds  them 
together,  and  makes  us  attribute  to  them  a  real  simplicity 
and  identity;  I  ^m  sensible,  that  my  accoimt  is  very 
defective,  and  that  nothing  but  the  seeming  evidence  of 
the  precedent  reasonings  could  have  induced  me  to  receive 
it.  .  .  .  All  my  hopes  vanish,  when  I  come  to  explain 
the  principles,  tliat  unite  our  successive  perceptions  in  our 
thoiight  or  conscioushess.  I  cannot  discover  "any  theory, 
which"~g1vesr-'Trrcr^atisfaction  on  this  head.  .  .  .  For  my- 
part,  I  must  plead  the  privilege  t)f  a  sceptic,  and  confess, 
thafthis  difficulty  is  too  hard  for  my  understanding.     I 

^  Treatise,  bk.  i.  pt.  iv.  sect.  6. 


1 68         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

pretend  not,  however,  to  pronounce  it  absolutely  insuper- 
able. Others,  perhaps,  or  myself,  upon  more  mature 
reflections,  may  discover  some  hypothesis,  that  will  recon- 
cile those  contradictions.'  That  Hume  did  not  discover 
any  such  hypothesis,  and  that  his  sense  of  the  difficulty 
had  meanwhile  rather  increased  than  diminished,  appears 
from  the  absence  of  the  entire  discussion  from  the  Enquiry^ 
published  eight  years  later. 

That,  in  this  theory  of  the  self,  we  have  the  logical 
issue  of  the  nominalistic  and  empirical  tendency  so 
prominent  in  the  philosophy  of  Hume's  English  prede- 
cessors, Locke  and  Berkeley,  is  evident  from  a  significant 
statement  in  the  Appendix  from  which  I  have  just  quoted  : 
'  We  can  conceive  a  thinking  being  to  have  either  many 
or  few  perceptions.  Suppose  the  mind  to  be  reduced  even 
below  the  life  of  an  oyster.  Suppose  it  to  have  only  one 
perception,  as  of  thirst  or  hunger.  Consider  it  in  that 
situation.  Do  you  conceive  anything  but  merely  that 
perception  ?  Have  you  any  notion  of  self  or  substance  P 
If  not,  the  addition  of  other  perceptions  can  never  give 
you  that  notion.'  It  does  not  occur  to  him  that  a  single 
or  wholly  unrelated  perception  would  be  as  good  as  none, 
or  that  the  conception  of  self  is  necessitated  by  the  very 
plurality  of  *  perceptions,'  not  the  mere  'addition  of  other 
perceptions'  but  their  combination  or  relation — the  fact 
that  the  plurality  of  perceptions  is  experienced  as  aTlTiity, 
or  in  one  consciousness,  which  is  what  we  mean  by  self. 

Thus,  so  far  as  reality  or  matters  of  fact  are  concerned, 
Locke'^  distinction  betweenJcnowJedge  and  belief,  between 
certainty_and  probability,  is  invalidated  by  Hume.  ^W'hat 
we  had  sup'posed  to  be  knowledge  is  seen  to  be  only 
belief;  what  had  seemed  to  be  certainty  is  seen  to  be 
only  probability.  'AH  knowledge  resolves  itself  intd-' 
probability,  and  becomes  at  last  of  the  same  nature  with 
that  evidence,  which  we  employ  in  common  Tife.'* 
What  we  had  supposed  to  be  reasoning  turns  out  to  be 

*    Treaiise,  bk.  i.  pt.  iv.  sect  i. 


HUME  169 

simply  the  cust^ncJAduced  determination  of  the  imagina- 
tion, *  more'^prbperly  an  ^^trt  of  the  sensitive  than  of  the 
cogitative  part  of  our  natures.'  We  can  never  hope  to 
escape  from  what  Bacon  called  the  *  idols  of  the  tribe  * ; 
our  so-called  knowledge  is  tainted  with  a  fatal  subjectivity. 
We  can  never  escape  from  the  shadow  of  our  own  nature  ; 
the  only  possible  science  is  that  of  human  nature,  riot  that 
of  the  nature,  of  things.  We  can  never  hope  to  interpret 
or  explain  things  eiTahalogia  universt  ;  we  must  always  do 
so  ex  analogia  hominis. 

The  very  ground  ot  this  scepticism,  however,  suggests 
at  once  its  limit  and  its  cure.  Our  scepticism  cannot  be 
permanently  of  the  universal  or  '  Pyrrhonic '  type ;  it  is 
always  'mitigated'  by  that  belief  which  is  more  natural 
than  any  doubts  to  which  reflection  may  give  rise. 
*  Nature,  by  an  absolute  and  uncontrollable  necessity,  has 
determined  us  to  judge  as  well  as  to  breathe  and  feel ;  nor 
can  we  any  more  forbear  viewing  certain  objects  in  a 
stronger  and  fuller  light,  upon  account  of  their  customary 
connexion  with  a  present  impression,  than  we  can  hinder 
ourselves  from  thinking  as  long  as  we  are  awake,  or  seeing 
the  surrounding  bodies,  when  we  turn  our  eyes  towards 
them  in  broad  sunshine.  Whoever  has  taken  the  pains  to 
refute  the  cavils  of  this  total  scepticism,  has  really  dispated 
without  an  antagonist,  and  endeavoured  by  arguments  to 
establish  a  faculty,  which  nature  has  antecedently  im- 
planted in  the  mind,  and  rendered  unavoidable.'^  The 
sceptical  argument  is  too  abstract  and  remote  from  ordinary 
human  interests  to  hold  the  mind  for  long.  *■  Most  for- 
tunately it  happens,  that  since  reason  is  incapable  of 
dispelling  these  clouds,  nature  herself  suffices  to  that 
purpose,  and  cures  me  of  this  philosophical  melancholy 
and  delirium,  either  by  relaxing  this  bent  of  mind,  or  by 
some  avocation,  and  lively  impression  of  my  senses,  which 
obliterates  all  these  chimeras.  I  dine,  I  play  a  game  of 
backgammon,  I  converse,  and  am  merry  with  my  friends  ; 
and  when  after  three  or  four  hours'  amusement,  I  would 

^  Loc,  cit. 


1 70         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

return  to  these  speculations,  they  appear  so  cold,  and 
strained,  and  ridiculous,  that  I  cannot  find  in  my  heart  to 
enter  into  them  any  farther.'^  tin  surrendering  himself 
to  this  natural  tendency  to  belief,  the  philosophical  sceptic 
consistently  maintains  his  scepticism.  *  I  may,  nay  I  must 
yield  to  the  current  of  nature,  in  submitting  to  my  senses 
and  understanding  ;  and  in  this  blind  submission  I  show 
most  perfectly  my  sceptical  disposition  and  principles.' 
Indolently  to  resign  oneself  to  *the  current  of  nature' 
is  the  very  perfection  of  scepticism.  *In  all  the  incidents 
of  life  we  ought  still  to  preserve  our  scepticism.  If  we 
believe,  that  fire  warms,  or  water  refreshes,  'tis  only 
because  it  costs  us  too  much  pains  to  think  otherwise. 
Nay  if  we  are  philosophers,  it  ought  only  to  be  upon 
sceptical  principles,  and  from  an  inclination,  which  we 
feel  to  the  employing  ourselves  after  that  manner.'  'A 
true  sceptic  will  be  diffident  of  his  philosophical  doubts, 
as  well  as  of  his  philosophical  conviction  ;  and  will  never 
refuse  any  innocent  satisfaction,  which  ofiFers  itself,  upon 
account  of  either  of  them.'  ^ 

In  the  Enquiry  Hume  strikes  a  more  positive  note,  and 
attempts  the  *  sceptical  solution '  of  his  sceptical  doubts. 
He  insists  upon  the  merely  theoretical  significance  of  his 
scepticism.  We  need  not  fear  '  that  this  philosophy, 
while  it  endeavours  to  limit  our  enquiries  to  common  life, 
should  ever  undermine  the  reasonings  of  common  life,  and 
carry  its  doubts  so  far  as  to  destroy  all  action,  as  well  as 
speculation,'  *  Custom  is  the  great  guide  of  human  life.  -^ 
It  is  that  principle  alone  which  renders  our  experience  v^ 
useful  to  us,  and  makes  us  expect,  for  the  future,  a  similar 
train  of  events  with  those  which  have  appeared  in  the 
past.'  In  the  fact  that  our  expectations  are  determined  by 
the  constant  conjunctions  of  our  past  experience  he  even 
finds  assurance  of  the  real  significance  of  our  reasonings 
about  matters  of  fact.  *  Here,  then,  is  a  kind  of  pre- 
established  harmony  between  the  course  of  nature  and 
the  succession  of  our  ideas ;  and  though    the  powers  and 

^  Treatise^  bk.  i.  pt.  iv.  sect.  7.  2  ^^,  cit. 


HUME  171 

forces,  by  which  the  former  is  governed,  be  wholly  un- 
known to  us  ;  yet  our  thoughts  and  conceptions  have  still, 
we  find,  gone  on  in  the  same  train  with  the  other  works 
of  nature.  Custom  is  that  principle,  by  which  this  corre- 
spondence has  been  affected  ;  so  necessary  to  the  sub- 
sistence of  our  species,  and  the  regulation  of  our  conduct, 
in  every  circumstance  and  occurrence  of  human  life. 
Had  not  the  presence  of  an  object  instantly  excited  the 
idea  of  those  objects,  commonly  conjoined  with  it,  all  our 
knowledge  must  have  been  limited  to  the  narrow  sphere 
of  our  memory  and  senses  ;  and  we  should  never  have 
been  able  to  adjust  means  to  ends,  or  employ  our  natural 
powers,  either  to  the  producing  of  good,  or  avoiding  of 
evil.^  And  the  lesson  which  he  draws  from  our  in- 
^VfCable  ignorance  of  the  nature  of  things  is  the  same 
lesson  as  Locke  had  drawn  from  the  narrow  limits 
of  human  knowledge,  namely,  *the  limitation  of  our 
enquiries  to  such  subjects  as  are  best  adapted  to  the 
narrow  capacity  of  human  understanding.  ...  A  correct 
Judgement^  .  .  .  avoiding  all  distant  and  high  enquiries, 
confines  itself  to  common  life,  and  to  such  subjects  as  fall 
under  daily  practice  and  experience  ;  leaving  the  more 
sublime  topics  to  the  embellishment  of  poets  and  orators, 
or  to  the  arts  of  priests  and  politicians.  To  bring  us  lO  so 
salutary  a  determination,  nothing  can  be  more  serviceable, 
than  to  be  once  thoroughly  convinced  of  the  force  of  the 
Pyrrhonian  doubt,  and  of  the  impossibility,  that  anything, 
but  the  strong  power  of  natural  instinct,  could  free  us 
from  it.  .  .  .  While  we  cannot  give  a  satisfactory  reason, 
why  we  believe,  after  a  thousand  experiments,  that  a 
stone  will  fall,  or  fire  burn  ;  can  we  ever  satisfy  ourselves 
concerning  any  determination,  which  we  may  form,  with 
regard  to  the  origin  of  worlds,  and  the  situation  of  nature, 
from,  and  to  eternity  ? '  2 

The^^ntire  sceptical  argument  has  reference,  it  will  be 
remem,bered7  only  to  our  reasonihgs~about  matters  of  fact, 

^  Enquiry  concerning  Human  L'inLr standing,  sect.  v.  pt.  iL 
^  Ibid.f  sect.  xii.  pt.  iii. 


172  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

and  does  not  affect  our  knowledge  of  the  relations  of  ideas. 
Hume  holds,  with  Locke,  that  while  certain  general  pro- 
positions are  merely  verbal  or  'trifling,*  consisting  in 
identical  statements  or  definitions  of  terms,  certain-others 
are  instructive,  in  spite  of  their  generality.  Of  this  type 
are  the  propositions  which  constitute  *  the  scieoces  of 
Geometry,  Algebra,  and  Arithmetic'  '  Propositions  of  this 
kind  are  discoverable  by  the  mere  operation  of  thought, 
without  dependence  on  what  is  anywhere  existent  in  the 
universe.  Though  there  never  were  a  circle  or  triangle  in 
nature,  the  truths  demonstrated  by  Euclid  would  for  ever  re- 
tain their  certainty  and  evidence.'^  While  the  Treatise  closes 
without  explicit  reference  to  the  exclusion  of  the  '  abstract 
sciences'  from.  the. scope  of  the  sceptical  conclusions  of 
that  w^ork,  the  Enquiry  contains  an  explicit  statement  on 
the  subject,  which  is  in  keeping  with  its  more  positive 
spirit.  'It  seems  to  me,  that  the  only  objects  of  the 
abstjact  sciences  or_DLderngnstration  are  quantity  and 
niynber,  and  that  all  attempts  to  extend  thfs  more  perfect 
specj(?s  fl£.  reasoning  beypnd  these  bounds  are  mere 
sophistry . ,and_,  illusion.  As  the  component  parts  of 
quantity  and  number  are  entirely  similar,  their  relations 
become  intricate  and  involved  ;  and  nothing  can  be  more 
curious,  as  well  as  useful,  than  to  trace,  by  a  variety  of 
mediums,  their  equality  or  inequality,  through  their 
different  appearances.  But  as  all  other  ideas  are  clearly 
distinct  and  different  from  each  other,  we  can  never 
advance  farther,  by  our  utmost  scrutiny,  than  to  observe 
this  diversity,  and,  by  an  obvious  reflection,  pronounce 
one  thing  not  to  be  another.  ...  It  is  the  same  case 
with  all  those  pretended  syllogistical  reasonings,  which 
may  be  found  in  every  other  branch  of  learning,  except 
the  sciences  of  quantity  and  number  ;  and  these  may 
safely,  I  think,  be  pronounced  the  only  proper  objects  of 
knowledge  and  demonstration.'  ^ 

In   the    Treatisey  however,  it   is  clear  that  Hume- -dis- 
allows  the    exactitude   ot    geometrical  truth.     He    there 

^  Enquiry  J  sect.  iv.  pt.  i.  Ibid.,  sect.  xii.  pt.  iii. 


HUME  173 

seeks  to  give  an  empirical  derivation  of  our  jdeas  of  space 
and  tinie,  as  well  as  of  our  other  ideas.  The  empirical 
basis  of  the  idea  of  space  is  the  impression  of  '  coloured  >^ 
and  tantjible  points  disposed  in  a  certain  way,'  and  Hume 
argues  that  the  absolute  quantities  of  geometrical  science 
are  no  less  illusory  than  identical  material  and  spiritual 
substances^  lEven-  in  the  Enquiry  he  condemns  the 
absurdities  which  result  from  the  logical  procedure  of  this 
science.  '  The  chief  objection  against  all  abstract  reason-  y 
ings  is  derived  from  the  ideas  of  space  and  time  ;  ideas, 
which,  in  common  life,  and  to  a  careless  view,  are  very 
clear  and  intelligible,  but  when  they  pass  through  the 
scrutiny  of  the  profound  sciences  (and  they  are  the  chief 
object  of  these  sciences)  afford  principles,  which  seem 
full  of  absurdity  and  contradiction.  No  priestly  dogmas^ 
invented  on  purpose  to  tame  and  subdue  the  rebellious 
reason  of  mankind,  ever  shocked  common  sense  more 
than  the  dortryq^^  nf  the  infinite  divisibility  or  extension, 
witb_its_cqnsequences  ;  as  they  are  pompously  dfsplayed 
by  all  geometricfans  and  metaphysicians,  with  a  kind  of 
triumph  and  exultation.  .  .  .  But  what  renders  the  matter 
more  extraordinary,  is,  that  these  seemingly  absurd 
opinions  are  supported  by  a  chain  of  reasoning,  the  clearest 
and  most  natural :  nor  is  it  possible  for  us  to  allow  the 
premises  without  admitting  the  consequences."*^  On  the 
other  hand,  Hume  has  no  such  criticism  to  make  in  the 
case  of  the  sciences  of  Number.  '  We  are  possest  of  a 
precise  standard,  by  which  we  can  judge  of  the  equality 
and  proportion  of  numbers  ;  and  according  as  they  corre- 
spond or  not  to  that  standard,  we  determine  their  rela- 
tions, without  any  possibility  of  error.  When  two 
numbers  are  so  combined,  as  that  the  one  has  always  an 
unite  answering  to  every  unite  of  the  other,  we  pro- 
nounce them  equal ;  and  'tis  for  want  of  such  a  standard 
of  equality  in  extension,  that  geometry  can  scarce  be  ' 
esteemed  a  perfect  and  infallible  science.'  *  There  re- 
main^ therefore,  algetra  and  arithmetic  as  the  onFy  scfences,  »^ 

^  Sect.  xiL  pt.  iL 


174         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

in  which  we  can  carry  on  a  chain  of  reasonin^Jiia  any 
degree  of  intricacy,  and  yet  preserve  a  perfect  exactness 
and  certainty.*^  Even  in  the  case  of  geometry,  however, 
Hume  holds  that  *  its  mistakes  can  never  be  of  any  conse- 
quence.' *  And  this,'  he  says,  *  is  the  nature  and  use  of 
geometry,  to  run  us  up  to  such  appearances,  as,  by  reason 
of  their  simplicity,  cannot  lead  us  into  any  considerable 
error.' 2  «^ 

Hume  devotes  the  two  remaining  Books  of  the  Treatise 
to  that  *  Human  Nature '  which  *  is  the  only  science  of 
man,  and  yet  has  been  hitherto  the  most  neglected.' 
Book  II.  is  concerned  with  the  '  anatomy '  of  the  Passions, 
Book  III.  with  Morals.  The  former  is  full  of  psycho- 
logical interest,  and  distinguished  by  its  illuminating  re- 
marks on  the  subtler  play  of  the  elemental  passions  of 
our  nature,  but  is  not  so  directly  the  basis  of  the  ethical 
theory  offered  in  Book  III.  as  to  make  any  detailed  account 
of  it  necessary  to  the  understanding  of  the  latter.  In 
making  the  two  leading  principles  Pride  and  Humility, 
on  the  one  hand,  and  Love  and  Hatred  on  the  other, 
Hume  foreshadows  the  two  governing  principles  of  his 
ethical  theory,  self-regard  and  benevolence.  In  the  im- 
portance he  attaches  to  sympathy  and  in  his  reduc- 
tion of  the  conflict  between  reason  and  passion  to  a 
conflict  between  the  calm  and  the  violent  passions,  he  at 
once  applies  the  principles  of  Book  I.  and  anticipates  the 
ethical  teaching  of  Book  III.  The  latter  point  is  argued 
with  no  little  insight.  *  We  speak  not  strictly  and  philo- 
sophically when  we  talk  of  the  combat  of  passion  and  of 
reason.  ...  A  passion  must  be  accompanied  with  some 
false  judgment,  in  order  to  its  being  unreasonable  ;  and 
even  then  'tis  not  the  passion,  properly  speaking,  which 
is  unreasonable,  but  the  judgment.  The  consequences  are 
evident.  Since  a  passion  can  never,  in  any  sense,  be  called 
unreasonable,  but  when  founded  on  a  false  supposition,  or 
when  it  chuses  means  insuflScient  for  the  designed  end, 

*  Treatise,  bk.  L  pt  iii.  sect.  i.  *  Lac.  cit. 


HUME  175 

'tis  impossible  that  reason  and  passion  can  ever  oppose 
each  other,  or  dispute  for  the  government  of  the  will  and 
actions.  The  moment  we  perceive  the  falsehood  of  any 
supposition,  or  the  insufficiency  of  any  means,  our  passions 
yield  to  our  reason  without  any  opposition.'^  Finally  he 
seeks  to  show  the  truth  of  the  doctrine  of  Book  I.  ^  *  that 
there  is  but  one  kind  of  necessity^  as  there  is  but  one  kind 
of  cause,  and  that  the  common  distinction  between  moral 
and  physical  necessity  is  without  any  foundation  in  nature,'  ^ 
arguing  that  the  '  liberty'  attributed  to  moral  agents  is  the 
same  thing  as  *  chance,'  which  simply  means  that  the 
cause  is  unknown.  The  same  argument  is  repeated  in 
the  Enquiry  concerning  Human  Understandings  where  it  is 
connected  immediately  with  the  general  account  of  causa- 
tion, and  the  attempt  is  made  to  show  that  such  a  view 
is  compatible,  as  the  doctrine  of  Liberty  is  not,  with  our 
ordinary  judgments  about  human  conduct  and  our  ordinary 
conceptions  of  moral  responsibility.  ^ 

The  connexion  of  the  general  psychology  of  the  passions 
with  the  ethical  theory  becomes  more  clear  when  we 
take  account  of  Hume's  opposition  to  the  view,  common 
to  Locke  and  Cudworth,  that  ethics  is  a  purely  rational 
science,  like  mathematics.  *  There  has  been  an  opinion 
very  industriously  propagated  by  certain  philosophers,  that 
morality  is  susceptible  of  demonstration  ;  and  tho'  no  one 
has  ever  been  able  to  advance  a  single  step  in  those  de- 
monstrations ;  yet  'tis  taken  for  granted,  that  this  science 
may  be  brought  to  an  equal  certainty  with  geometry  or 
algebra,'  *  Against  '  the  system  which  establishes  eternal 
rational  measures  of  right  and  wrong '  he  urges  that  the 
distinction  is  one  of  sensibility,  not  of  reason  ;  that  its 
basis  is  to  be  found,  not  in  the  object,  but  in  the  subject. 
'  The  vice  entirely  escapes  you,  as  long  as  you  consider 
the  object.  You  never  can  find  it,  till  you  turn  your 
reflexion  into  your  own  breast,  and  find  a  sentiment  of 
disapprobation,  which  arises  in  you,  towards  this  action. 

^  Treatise,  bk.  ii.  pt.  iii.  sect.  3.  *  Pt.  iii.  sect.  14. 

3  Enquiry,  sect.  viii.  *  Treatise,  bk.  iii.  pt.  i.  sect.  i. 


176         ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

Here  is  a  matter  of  fact ;  but  'tis  the  object  of  feeling, 
not  of  reason.  It  lies  in  yourself,  not  in  the  object.  So 
that  when  you  pronounce  any  action  or  character  to  be 
vicious,  you  mean  nothing,  but  that  from  the  constitution 
of  your  nature  you  have  a  feeling  or  sentiment  of  blame 
from  the  contemplation  of  it.'^  The  *  ought'  can  never 
be  deduced  from  the  *  is,'  the  *  ought  not '  from  the  *  is 
not.'  All  that  reason  tells  us  is  what  is  the  tendency  of 
actions,  beneficial  or  hurtful,  to  ourselves  or  to  others ; 
it  enajjles  us  to  decide  between  *  obscure  or  opposite 
utilities.'  Sentiment,  or  a  preference  of  feeling,  alone 
can  decide  in  favour  of  the  end, — the  happiness,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  misery,  whether  of  ourselves  or  of 
others.  *  Morality,  therefore,  is  more  properly  felt  than 
judged  of  ;  it  appeals  to  a  *  moral  sense'  or  disinterested 
preference  of  good  to  evil.  *  As  virtue  is  an  end,  and  is 
desirable  on  its  own  account,  without  fee  and  reward, 
merely  for  the  immediate  satisfaction  which  it  conveys ; 
it  is  requisite  that  there  should  be  some  sentiment  which 
it  touches,  some  internal  taste  or  feeling,  or  whatever  you 
may  please  to  call  it,  which  distinguishes  moral  good  and 
evil,  and  which  embraces  the  one  and  rejects  the  other.' ^ 
While  Hume  appears,  in  the  Enquiry,  to  accept  the 
'  moral  sense '  view,  as  already  formulated  by  Hutcheson, 
and  objects  to  a  too  *  systematic  '  explanation  of  our  moral 
judgments,  he  seeks,  in  the  Treatisey  to  reduce  the  sentiment 
of  moral  approval  and  disapproval  to  terms  of  regard  for 
our  own  happiness,  explaining  it  as  a  sympathetic  appro- 
priation of  the  consequences  of  our  actions  for  the  happi- 
ness of  others,  and  insisting  that  we  ought  to  aim  at 
*  simplicity '  in  moral  as  in  natural  philosophy,  and  not  to 
invent  new  principles  where  old  ones  are  sufficient. 
Accordingly  we  find  that  while,  in  the  Treatise,  justice 
is  regarded  as  the  one  great  social  virtue,  in  the  Enquiry 
benevolence  takes  precedence  of  justice,  and  is  explained 
as  a  general  regard  for  the  interests  of  humanity,  as  such  ; 
the  principles  of  sympathy  and  association  are  no  longer 

*  Treatise,  bk.  iii.  pt.  i.  sect.  i.  ^  Enquiry,  App.  I. 


y 


HUME  177 

invoked  in  the  explanation  of  justice  ;  and  a  new  emphasis 
is  laid  upon  the  essential  disinterestedness  of  the  passions, 
the  indispensable  instruments  of  a  wise  self-love. 

In  both  works  Hume  insists  upon  the  '  artificial '  char- 
acter of  justice.  It  is  the  result  of  a  conventional  under- 
standing between  the  members  of  a  civilised  society  that 
they  will  abstain  from  the  possessions  of  each  other,  a 
convention  tacit  and  unexpressed,  like  that  between  the 
rowers  who  '  pull  the  oars  by  agreement  or  convention, 
tho'  they  have  never  given  promises  to  each  other.'  It  is 
a  rule  which  *  arises  gradually,  and  acquires  force  by  a 
slow  progression,  and  by  our  repeated  experience  of  the 
inconveniences  of  transgressing  it.'  Justice  is  thus  the 
machinery  by  which  the  individual  secures  his  own  interest. 
'  There  is  no  passion  .  .  .  capable  of  controlling  the 
interested  affection,  but  the  very  affection  itself,  by  an 
alteration  of  its  direction,'  If  men  were  unselfish,  or  it 
nature  offered  in  abundance  all  that  was  necessary  to 
satisfy  their  every  want,  there  would  be  no  occasion  for 
this  mutual  self-defence.  '  'Tis  only  from  the  selfishness 
and  confined  generosity  of  men,  along  with  the  scanty 
provision  nature  has  made  for  his  wants,  that  justice 
derives  its  origin.'  'Instead  of  departing  from  our  own 
interest,  or  from  that  of  our  nearest  friends,  by  abstaining 
from  the  possessions  of  others,  we  cannot  better  consult 
both  these  interests,  than  by  such  a  convention  ;  because 
it  is  by  that  means  we  maintain  society,  which  is  so 
necessary  to  their  well-being  and  subsistence,  as  well  as 
to  our  own.'^  But  while,  in  the  sense  explained,  justice 
has  its  origin  in  *  the  artifice  and  contrivance  of  men,'  it 
is  in  another  and  deeper  sense  natural.  '  Mankind  is  an 
inventive  species ;  and  where  an  invention  is  obvious  and 
absolutely  necessary,  it  may  as  properly  be  said  to  be 
natural  as  anything  that  proceeds  immediately  from  original 
principles,  without  the  intervention  of  thought  or  re- 
flexion. Tho'  the  rules  of  justice  be  artificial^  they  are 
not  arbitrary.     Nor  is   the    expression  improper    to   call 

^  Treatise,  bk.  iii.  pt.  ii,  sect.  2. 

M 


178  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

them  Laws  of  Nature;  if  by  natural  we  understand  what 
is  common  to  any  species,  or  even  if  we  confine  it  to 
mean  what  is  inseparable  from  the  species.'  ^ 

In  the  Enquiryy  the  virtue  of  justice  is  subordinated  to 
that  of  benevolence,  or  disinterested  regard  for  the  general 
happiness,  which  is  accepted  as  the  supreme  end  on  '  the 
blind,  but  sure  testimony  of  taste  and  sentiment.'  This 
is  the  result,  it  is  contended,  of  *  a  natural,  unforced 
interpretation  of  the  phenomena  of  human  life.'  While, 
in  the  Treatise^  it  was  maintained  that  *  the  public 
good  is  indifferent  to  us,  except  so  far  as  sympathy  in- 
terests us  in  it,'  the  doctrine  of  the  Enquiry  is  that  '  the 
voice  of  nature  and  experience  seems  plainly  to  oppose 
the  selfish  theory.'  *We  must  renounce  the  theory, 
which  accounts  for  every  moral  sentiment  by  the  principle 
of  self-love.  We  must  adopt  a  more  public  affection, 
and  allow,  that  the  interests  of  society  are  not,  even  on 
their  own  account,  entirely  indifferent  to  us.  .  .  .  Every- 
thing, which  contributes  to  the  happiness  of  society, 
recommends  itself  directly  to  our  approbation  and  good- 
will.' 'It  is  needless  to  push  our  researches  so  far  as 
to  ask,  why  we  have  humanity  or  a  fellow-feeling  with 
others.  It  is  sufficient,  that  this  is  experienced  to  be  a 
principle  in  human  nature.  We  must  stop  somewhere 
in  our  examination  of  causes ;  and  there  are,  in  every 
science,  some  general  principles,  beyond  which  we  cannot 
hope  to  find  any  principle  more  general.'  ^ 

In  the  second  Appendix  to  the  Enquiry  Hume  bases 
his  theory  of  the  disinterestedness  of  our  regard  for  the 
happiness  of  others  upon  a  new  psychology  of  the  pas- 
sions, which  follows  very  closely  Butler's  account  of 
the  object  of  desire  and  its  relation  to  self-love.  In 
the  Treatise  he  had  maintained  that  '  'tis  from  the  pros- 
pect of  pain  or  pleasure  that  the  aversion  or  propensity 
arises  towards  any  object.'^  He  now  distinguishes  be- 
tween the  original  passion,  which  'points  immediately  to 
the  object,  and  constitutes  it  our  good  or  happiness'  and 

^  Treatise,  bk.  iii.  pt.  ii.  sect.  i.  *  Enquiry,  sect.  v.  pt.  ii. 

'  Bk.  ii.  pt.  iii.  sect.  3. 


HUME  179 

*  other  secondary  passions  which  afterwards  arise  and 
pursue  it  as  a  part  of  our  happiness.'  '  Were  there  no 
appetite  of  any  kind  antecedent  to  self-love,  that  pro- 
pensity could  scarcely  ever  exert  itself;  because  we 
should,  in  that  case,  have  felt  few  and  slender  pains  or 
pleasures,  and  have  little  misery  or  happiness  to  avoid 
or  to  pursue.  Now  where  is  the  difficulty  in  conceiv- 
ing, that  this  may  likewise  be  the  case  with  benevolence 
and  friendship,  and  that,  from  the  original  frame  of  our 
temper,  we  may  feel  a  desire  of  another's  happiness  or 
good,  which,  by  means  of  that  affection,  becomes  our 
own  good,  and  is  afterwards  pursued,  from  the  combined 
motives  of  benevolence  and  self-enjoyments  ?  Who  sees 
not  that  vengeance,  from  the  force  alone  of  passion,  may 
be  so  eagerly  pursued,  as  to  make  us  knowingly  neglect 
every  consideration  of  ease,  interest,  or  safety  ;  and,  like 
some  vindictive  animals,  infuse  our  very  souls  into  the 
wounds  we  give  an  enemy  ;  and  what  a  malignant  philo- 
sophy must  it  be,  that  will  not  allow  to  humanity  and 
friendship  the  same  privileges  which  are  undisputably 
granted  to  the  darker  passions  of  enmity  and  resentment ; 
such  a  philosophy  is  more  like  a  satyr  than  a  true  delinea- 
tion or  description  of  human  nature  ;  and  may  be  a  good 
foundation  for  paradoxical  wit  and  raillery,  but  is  a  very 
bad  one  for  serious  argument  or  reasoning.' 

But  while  the  principle  of  benevolence  or  social  utility 
is  *the  sole  source  of  that  high  regard  paid  to  justice, 
fidelity,  honour,  allegiance,  and  chastity,'  and  is  '  insepar- 
able from  all  the  other  social  virtues,  humanity,  generosity, 
charity,  affability,  lenity,  mercy,  and  moderation,'  and  is 
therefore  a  foundation  of  the  chief  part  of  morals,  which 
has  a  reference  to  mankind  and  our  fellow-creatures,'  it  is 
not  for  Hume,  as  for  Hutcheson,  the  all-inclusive  ethical 
principle  ;  virtue  and  benevolence  are  not  convertible 
terms.  Qualities  of  action  and  of  character  useful  or 
immediately  agreeable  to  ourselves  are  no  less  praiseworthy 
than  those  which  are  useful  or  immediately  agreeable 
to  others.  Happiness  is  the  only  ultimate  end,  but  it  may  v^' 
be  either  our  own  or  that  of  others ;  and  Hume  does  not 


i8o         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

doubt  the  harmony  of  these  two  ends.  And  when  he 
comes,  in  the  concluding  section  of  the  Enquiry^  to  the 
consideration  of  obligation,  he  speaks  of  it  as  *  interested,' 
and  identifies  the  question  of  obligation  with  the  question 
*  whether  every  man,  who  has  any  regard  to  his  own 
happfness  and  welfare,  will  not  best  find  his  account  in 
the  practice  of  every  moral  duty.'  '  What  theory  of 
morals  can  ever  serve  any  useful  purpose,  unless  it  can 
show,  by  a  particular  detail,  that  all  the  duties  which  it 
recommends,  are  also  the  true  interest  of  each  individual  ? ' 
In  proof  of  the  truth  of  his  own  theory  he  points  to  the 
attractive  picture  of  virtue  which  it  offers,  representing 
her  '  in  all  her  genuine  and  most  engaging  charms,'  and 
making  us  'approach  her  with  ease,  familiarity,  and 
affection.'  *  The  sole  trouble  which  she  demands,  is  that 
of  just  calculation,  and  a  steady  preference  of  the  greater 
happiness.'  A  true  psychology  of  human  passion  or  pro- 
pensity shows  that  there  is  no  more  opposition  between 
selfishness  and  benevolence  than  between  selfishness  and 
any  other  natural  propensity,  and  that  the  presupposition  of  a 
true  self-love  is  disinterested  interest  in  the  objects  of  these 
natural  propensities.  The  only  case  in  which  a  doubt 
is  possible  regarding  the  coincidence  of  virtue  and  self- 
interest  is  that  of  justice.  'But  in  all  ingenuous  natures, 
the  antipathy  to  treachery  and  roguery  is  too  strong  to  be 
counterbalanced  by  any  views  of  profit  or  pecuniary 
advantage.'  Such  natures  will  indeed  'find  their  account ' 
in  virtue.  '  Inward  peace  of  mind,  consciousness  of 
integrity,  a  satisfactory  review  of  our  past  conduct ;  these 
are  circumstances  very  requisite  to  happiness,  and  will  be 
cherished  and  cultivated  by  every  honest  man,  who  feels 
the  importance  of  them.' 

To  the  restatement  of  his  philosophical  views  in  the 
first  Enquiry  Hume  added  two  essays  in  which  he  applies 
his  general  principles  to  the  solution  of  the  problems  of 
Miracles,  a  Particular  Providence  and  a  Future  State.     It 

'  Sect.  ix.  pt,  ii. 


HUME  i8i 

is  significant  that,  while  he  had  not  in  the  Treatise  even 
suggested  any  such  applications,  he  should  thus  later  have 
endangered  the  symmetry  of  the  Enquiry  by  this  addition. 
The  explanation  is  to  be  found,  I  think,  not  so  much  in  a 
desire  to  disturb  '  the  zealots '  as  in  a  deepening  interest 
in  such  metaphysical  and  theological  questions.  His 
interest  in  the  problem  of  knowledge  itself  had  been  long 
satisfied  ;  other  interests  had  since  absorbed  his  mind.  *  I 
have  thought,  and  read,  and  composed  very  little  on 
such  questions  of  late,'  he  writes  to  Gilbert  Elliot  in 
175 1  ;  'Morals,  Politics,  and  L i te*stfia re^Tnvy e  employed 
all  my  time.'  Yet  in  the  same  Letter  he  asksshis  friend's 
opinion  and  advice  about  th(*e  Dialogues  orK  Natural 
Religion  which,  though  they  were  not  published  until 
after  his  death,  had  been  alaeady  written.  In\i757 
appeared,  among  the  Four  Disxrtatior 
shows  very  considerable  readin) 
entitled  The  Natural  History  of 
tute  Hume's  contribution  to  the  pi 

The  Natural  History  of  Religion  is*' 
though  it  shows  Hume's  sagacity  in 
historical  and  comparative  method  of^ 
subject.  Its  main  purpose  is  to  prove 
the  primary  or  universal,  but  a  later  and 
of  the  religious  consciousness.  The  earliest  product  of 
the  religious  imagination,  he  insists,  is  not  a  single  Author 
or  Maker  of  the  world,  such  as  the  world-order  suggests  to 
later  reflection,  but  a  number  of  beings  fashioned  in  man's 
own  image,  '  intelligent,  voluntary  agents,  like  ourselves  ; 
only  somewhat  superior  in  power  and  wisdom.'  ^  As 
one  of  these  beings  gradually  rises  to  supremacy  over 
the  others,  polytheism  gives  place  to  theism  ;  while  theism 
tends  in  turn  to  degenerate  into  polytheism.  'It  is  re- 
markable, that  the  principles  of  religion  have  a  kind  of  flux 
and  reflux  in  the  human  mind,  and  that  men  have  a  natural 
tendency  to  rise  from  idolatry  to  theism,  and  to  sink  again 
from  theism  into  idolatry.' ^     The  lesson  which  Hume 

*  Nat.  Hist,  of  Religion,  sect.  v.  *  Ibid.,  sect.  viii. 


1 82  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

draws  from  the  inevitableness  of  the  process  of  degenera- 
tion and  corruption  in  religion,  from  the  impossibility  of 
maintaining  the  distinction  between  genuine  religion,  the 
true  ally  of  morality,  and  mere  superstition,  its  enemy  or 
at  best  its  uncertain  friend,  is  that  of  philosophical  in- 
differentism.  'The  whole  is  a  riddle,  an  aenigma,  an 
inexplicable  mystery.  Doubt,  uncertainty,  suspense  of 
judgment  appear  the  only  result  of  our  most  accurate 
scrutiny  concerning  this  subject.  But  such  is  the  frailty 
of  human  reason,  and  such  the  irresistible  contagion  of 
opinion,  that  even  this  deliberate  doubt  could  scarcely  be 
upheld  ;  did  we  not  enlarge  our  view,  and  opposing  one 
species  of  superstition  to  another,  set  them  a  quarrelling  ; 
while  we  ourselves,  during  their  fury  and  contention, 
happily  make  our  escape  into  the  calm,  though  obscure, 
regions  of  philosophy.'  ^ 

The  relation  of  the  two  essays,  which  were  added  to  the 
first  Enquiry^  to  the  central  philosophical  positions  of  that 
work  is  really  much  closer  than  we  might  at  first  suppose. 
The  argument  against  miracles  is  based  upon  the  view  of 
causation  as  identical  with  constant  conjunction :  a 
miracle  is  a  contradiction  of  the  uniforjnity  of  nature  to 
which  all  our  experience  testifies,  and  is  therefore  in- 
credible, no  matter  what  the  testimony  in  its  favour  may 
be.  At  the  same  time  men's  tendency  to  believe  in  the 
miraculous  is  explained  in  terms  of  that  human  nature 
which  is,  according  to  Hume,  the  ultimate  term  in  all 
explanation.  The  argument  for  a  particular  Providence 
and  future  rewards  and  punishments  rests,  it  is  argued, 
upon  a  false  view  of  causation,  refusing  as  it  does  to 
interpret  the  cause  in  the  light  of  the  effect  and  adding 
causal  factors  for  which  we  have  no  warrant  in  corre- 
sponding effects.  It  at  the  same  time  repudiates  the 
empirical  measure  of  reality  which  has  been  shown  to  be 
the  only  human  measure  of  it.  r. 

In  this  essay  we  have,  on  a  smaller  scale,  Hume's  views 
on  Natural  Theology  which  are  developed  more  fully  in 

*  Nat.  Hisl.  of  Religion^  sect.  xv. 


HUME  183 

the  Dialogues  on  Natural  Religion.  The  position  common 
to  botlT^  neither  that  of  mere  sceptipism  or  atheism,  on 
the  one  hand,  nor  that  of  theism,  on  the  other,  but  that 
of  agnostic  deism  or,  as  Professor  Campbell  Fraser  calls 
it, 'attenuated  theism.'  The  view  which  is  controverted 
is  that  of  a  dogmatic  and  imaginative  theism,  based  upon 
unwarranted  anthropomorphism  and  resulting  from 
*  enthusiasm,' — zeal  uncontrolled  by  reason  or  experience. 
Huxley  calls  the  view  advocated  in  the  Dialogues  a 
'shadowy  and  inconsistent  theism,'  and  sees  in  it  'the 
expression  of  his  desire  to  rest  in  a  state  of  mind,  which 
distinctly  excluded  negation,  while  it  included  as  little  as 
possible  of  affirmation,  respecting  a  problem  which  he 
felt  to  be  hopelessly  insoluble.'  ^ 

The  three  interlocutors  in  the  Dialogues  are  sufficiently 
characterised  by  Hume  himself,  who  contrasts  '  the 
accurate.,  philosophical  turn  of  Cleanthes/  with  '  the 
rarp1p.K«;  fj^-pptirigfp^  nf  Philo*  and  both  with  'the  rigid 
inflexible  orthodoxy  of  Demea.'  The  affinity  of  the 
scepticism  ot  Philff^with  the  mysticism  of  Demea  is 
emphasised  in  the  course  of  the  discussion,  in  which 
Philo  accepts  the 'term  'mystic'  as  their  common  desig- 
nation ;  and  so  far  as  these  two  speakers  are  concerned, 
Hume's  intention  clearly  is  to  reduce  mysticism  to  scep- 
ticism, or  unconscious  to  conscious  scepticism,  and  thus 
to  leave  the  issue  between  Philo  and  Cleanthes.  He 
makes  the  narrator  of  the  conversation  say  at  the  close  : 
'I  confess,  that,  upon  a  serious  review  of  the  whole,  I 
cannot  l)irt  think  that  Philo's  principles  are  more  probable 
than  Demea's ;  but^hat  those  of  Cleanthes  approach  still 
near^to  the  truth.'  In  a  letter  to  Gilbert  Elliot,  already 
quotea,  Hume  says  :  'You  would  observe  by  the  sample 
I  have  given  you,  that  I  make  Cleanthes  the  hero  of  the 
dialogue  :  whatever  you  can  think  of,  to  strengthen  that 
side  of  the  argument,  will  be  most  acceptable  to  me. 
Any  propensity  you  imagine  I  have  to  the  other  side, 
crept    in    upon  me  against   my  will.'     The  position    of 

^  Hume,  in  '  English  Men  of  Letters,'  p.  157. 


1 84         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Cleanthes  is  that  of  a  philosophical  theism  which  infers 
^the  divine  intelligence  and  goodness  from  the  marks  of 
[purpose  in  the  world  of  our  experience.  *I  could  wish,' 
*he  continues  in  this  letter,  '  Cleanthes'  argument  could  be 
so  analysed,  as  to  be  rendered  quite  formal  and  regular. 
The  propensity  of  the  mind  towards  it, — unless  that 
propensity  were  as  strong  and  universal  as  that  to  believe 
in  our  senses  and  experience, — will  still,  I  am  afraid, 
be  esteemed  a  suspicious  foundation.  'Tis  here  I  wish 
for  your  assistance  ;  we  must  endeavour  to  prove  that  this 
propensity  is  somewhat  different  from  our  inclination  to 
find  our  own  figures  in  the  clouds,  our  faces  in  the  moon, 
our  passions  and  sentiments  even  in  inanimate  matter. 
Such  an  inclination  may,  and  ought  to  be  controlled,  and 
can  never  be  a  legitimate  ground  of  assent.'^  He  also 
speaks  of '  the  confusion  in  which  I  represent  the  sceptic,' 
and  in  a  letter  to  Strahan,  written  shortly  before  his  death, 
he  says,  *  I  thfire-untrodiice  a_  ScepjdCj  jwho  is  indeed 
refuted,  and  at  las^t  ^iyes  up  the  .Argument,  nay  confesses  -- 
that  he  was  onlyamusin^Jiimself  by  all  his  Cavils ;  yet 
before  he  is  silenced,  he  advaaces..several  'I'opTcs,  which 
will  give  Umbrage,  and  will  be  deemed  very  bold  and 
free,  as  well  as  much  out  of  the  common  Road.'^  In  the 
course  of  the  argument,  however,  it  will  be  found  that, 
as  we  should  expect,  Philo's  criticisms  are  made  to  tell 
heavily  upon  the  positions  of  his  opponent,  vvhich  are 
seriously  modified  in  consequence.  The  '  confusion '  of 
Cleanthes  is  no  less  real  than  that  of  Philo ;  indeed,  the 
latter  succeeds  in  his  argument,  so  far  as  it  is  seriously 
intended,  and  is  not  a  mere  argumentum  ad  hominem. 

The  question  of  the  Dialogues  is  not  that  of  the 
existence,  but  that  of  the  nature  of  God.  *  Surely,'  says 
Philo,  *  where  reasonable  men  treat  these  subjects,  the 
question  can  never  be  concerning  the  Beings  but  only  the 
Nature  of  the  Deity.  The  former  truth,  as  you  well  y 
observe,  is  unquestionable  and  self-evident.  Nothing'^ 
exists  without  a  cause ;    and  the  original  cause  of  this' 

^  Burton's  Life,  i.  331-3.  *  Letters  to  Strahan,  p.  330. 


HUME  185 

universe  (whatever  it  be)  we  call  God  ;  and  piously  ascribe 
to  him  every  species  of  perfection.  .  .  .  But  as  all  perfec- 
tion is  entirely  relative,  we  ought  never  to  imagine,  that 
we  comprehend  the  attributes  of  this  divine  Being,  or 
to  suppose,  that  his  perfections  have  any  analogy  or  like- 
ness to  the  perfections  of  a  human  creature.  Wisdom,^ 
Thought,  Design,  Knowledge;  these  we  justly  ascribe \ 
to  him  ;  because  these  words  are  honourable  among  men, 
and  we  have  no  other  language  or  other  conceptions,  by- 
which  we  can  express  our  adoration  of  him.  But  let  us//^ 
beware,  lest  we  think,  that  our  ideas  any  wise  correspond 
to  his  perfections,  or  that  his  attributes  have  any  resem- 
blance to  these  qualities  among  men.  He  is  infinitely 
superior  to  our  limited  view  and  comprehension  ;  and  is 
more  the  object  of  worship  in  the  temple,  than  of  disputa- 
tion in  the  schools.' ^  The  polemic  of  Philo  is  directed^ 
against  the  dogmatism  and  anthropomorphism  of  the 
theoTogtanSp^gamst- -the-  exaggeration  of  the  argument 
from  anaIogy~inIo  ia  proof  that  the  nature  of  God  is  the 
counterpart  of  that  of  man.  The  basis  of  thfs  argument 
is  found  in  the  marks  of  design  in  the  works  of  God  in 
Nature  ;  and  it  is  the  inference  from  design  to  the  nature 
of  God,  not  the  actuality  of  design,  that  is  criticised  by 
Hume.  "The  outcome  of  the  discussion  is  to  bring  Philo 
and~Cleanth.es  to  agreement  as  to  the  actuality. oT design. 
*In  Iriany  views  of  the  universe,  and  of  its  parts,  par- 
ticularly the  latter,  the  beauty  and  fitness  of  final  causes 
strike  us  with  such  irresistible  force,  that  all  objections 
appear  (what  I  believe  they  really  are)  mere  cavils  and 
sophisms ;  nor  can  we  then  imagine  how  it  was  ever 
possible  for  us  to  repose  any  weight  on  them.'^  *A 
purpose,  an  intention,  a  design,'  Philo  says  again^' strikes 
everywhere  the  most  careless,  the  fflOlt  stupid  thinker; 
and  no  man  can  be  so  hardened  in  absurd  systems,  as  at 
all  limesTO  rejecl  i t . '  ^ 

So  far  as  the  real  question  of  the  Dialogues — the  question 
of  the  validity  of  the  inference  from  design  to  the  attri- 

^  Dialogues,  pt.  ii.  *  Ibid.,  pt.  x.  '  Ibid,,  pt.  xii. 


1 86         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS  ^ 

butes  which  it  icnphes  in  God — is  concerned,  Philo  is  made 
ultimately  to  assent,  in  a  sense,  to  the  inference  to  the 
divine  intelligence.  '  If  we  make  it  a  question,  whether, 
on  account  of  these  analogies,  we  can  properly  call  him 
a  mind  or  intelligence^  notwithstanding  the  vast  differ- 
ence, which  may  reasonably  be  supposed  between  him 
and  human  minds;  what  is  this  but  a  mere  verbaL con- 
troversy ?  No  man  can  deny  the  analogies  between  the 
effects  :  to  restrain  ourselves  from  enquiring  concerning 
the  causes  is  scarcely  possible  :  from  this  enquiry,  the 
legitimate  conclusion  is,  that  the  causes  have  also  an 
analogy  :  and  if  we  are  not  contented  with  calling  the 
first  and  supreme  cause  a  God  or  Deity,  but  desire  to 
vary  the  expression  ;  what  can  we  call  him  but  Mind  or 
Thought,  to  which  he  is  justly  supposed  to  bear  a  con- 
siderable resemblance?'^  It  is  the  moral  part  of  the/ 
inference  that  proves  intractable.  The  misery  of  th^ 
world,  and  especially  of  human  life,  may  possibly  be 
compatible  with  the  goodness  of  God,  but  it  certainly 
cannot  form  the  ground  of  an  inference  to  his  goodness. 
*  Why  is  there  any  misery  at  all  in  the  world  ?  Not  by 
chance  surely.  From  some  cause  then.  Is  it  from  the 
intention  of  the  Deity  ?  But  he  is  perfectly  benevolent. 
Is  it  contrary  to  his  intention  ?  But  he  is  almighty. 
Nothing  can  shake  the  solidity  of  this  reasoning,  so  short, 
so  clear,  so  decisive  ;  except  we  assert,  that  these  subjects 
exceed  all  human  capacity,  and  that  our  common  measures 
of  truth  and  falsehood  are  not  applicable  to  them  ;  a  topic 
which  I  have  all  along  insisted  on,  but  which  you  have, 
from  the  beginning,  rejected  with  scorn  and  indignation. 
.  .  .  Here,  Cleanthes,  I  find  myself  at  ease  in  my  argu- 
ment. Here  I  triumph.  .  .  .  There  is  no  view  of  human 
life  or  of  the  condition  of  mankind,  from  which,  without 
the  greatest  violence,  we  can  infer  the  moral  attributes,  or 
learn  that  infinite  benevolence,  conjoined  with  infinite 
power  and  infinite  wisdom,  which  we  must  discover  by 
the  eyes  of  faith  alone.'  ^     *  The  true  conclusion  is,  that 

»  Loc.  cit.  "  Ibid.,  pt.  x. 


HUME  187 

the  original  source  of  all  things  is  entirely  indifferent  to  all 
these  principles,  and  has  no  more  regard  to  good  above 
ill  than  to  heat  above  cold,  or  to  drought  above  moisture, 
or  to  light  above  heavy.'  ^ 

'     .  ^  Ibid.,  pt.  xi. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE   MORALISTS 

I .   The  Moral  Sense  School :  Shaftesbury,  Hutcheson,  Butler 

Like  the  rationalists  of  the  seventeenth  century,  these 
moralists  of  the  eighteenth  were  stimulated  to  ethical 
inquiry  by  opposition  to  the  views  of  Hobbes.  In  Locke's 
view  of  moral  obligation,  however,  they  saw  a  restatement 
of  Hobbes,  which  was  all  the  more  dangerous  since  it 
was  less  paradoxical  and  fell  in  more  naturally  with  the 
current  theological  ideas.  Locke,  like  Hobbes,  had  found 
the  basis  of  moral  obligation,  though  not  the  explanation  of 
morality,  in  will,  rather  than  in  reason,  but  in  the  will  of 
God  rather  than  in  that  of  the  earthly  sovereign.  Locke, 
like  Hobbes,  had  found  the  motive  and  sanction  of  virtue 
in  self-interest,  but  in  divine  rather  than  in  political  re- 
wards and  punishments.  The  stress  of  the  later  polemic 
is  rather  upon  the  altruism  than  upon  the  rationality  or 
absoluteness  of  morality.  It  is  to  be  remembered  that 
Hutcheson  and  Butler  have  in  view  the  coarser  version  of 
egoism  formulated  by  Mandeville  in  the  Fable  of  the  Bees, 
or  Private  Vices  Public  Benefits,  and  it  cannot  be  doubted 
that  it  was  this  extreme  and  repulsive  development  of  the 
implications  of  Hobbian  and  Lockian  egoism  that  roused 
these  moralists  to  the  defence  of  the  altruistic  element  in 
virtue. 

In  Shaftesbury  we  find  all  the  characteristic  positions  ot 
the  school — generally  known  as  the  *  moral  sense '  school 
— already  formulated,  though  it  required  the  more  elaborate 
and  systematic  restatements  of  his  successors  to  make 
clear  the  full  significance  of  these  positions.  The  only 
real  difference  of  opinion  between  them   concerns   the 

i88 


THE   MORALISTS  189 

place  of  benevolence  and  its  relation  to  self-love  on  the 
one  hand  and  to  virtue,  as  such,  on  the  other ;  and  it 
is,  on  the  whole,  true  to  say  that  Butler  corrects  the 
exaggerated  claim  made  by  Hutcheson  for  benevolence, 
and  re-affirms  the  more  comprehensive  view  of  the  nature 
of  virtue  originally  formulated  by  Shaftesbury.  As  regards 
the  relation  of  virtue  to  the  happiness  of  the  virtuous 
agent,  or  to  self-love,  it  will  also  be  found  that  Butler 
does  little  more  than  restate  the  views  of  Shaftesbury.  It 
is  in  the  sphere  of  Natural  Theology,  rather  than  in  that 
of  Ethics,  that  Butler  parts  company  with  his  predecessors, 
and  develops  the  vague  optimism  of  Shaftesbury  into  a 
novel  and  ingenious  theory  of  his  own  devising. 

Shaftesbury  is  not  only  the  most  original  thinker 
but,  on  the  whole,  the  best  writer  of  the  school.  While 
it  is  doubtless  an  exaggeration  to  say,  with  Mackintosh, 
that  'no  thinker  so  great  was  ever  so  bad  a  writer'  as 
Butler,  yet  when  compared  with  other  English  philo- 
sophers, both  earlier  and  later,  Butler  cannot  be  called 
a  good  writer.  On  occasion  he  rises  to  something 
like  eloquence,  and  in  general  is  not  lacking  in  im- 
pressiveness  and  individuality  ;  it  has  been  truly  remarked 
that  'the  lover  of  aphorisms  might  make  an  interesting 
collection  from  the  pages  of  Butler.'^  But  his  Style  is 
careless  and  lacking  in  elegance  and,  above  all,  in  the 
essential  excellence  of  a  philosophical  style,  clearness. 
Of  Hutcheson,  Mackintosh  says  that  he  is  'a  chaste 
and  simple  writer,  who  imbibed  the  opinions,  with- 
out the  literary  faults  of  his  master,  Shaftesbury.  He 
has  a  charm  of  expression,  and  fulness  of  illustration, 
which  are  wanting  in  Butler '^  Yet  his  writings  fail 
entirely  to  suggest  that  gift  of  expression  which,  by 
general  consent,  was  characteristic  of  his  oral  teaching ; 
and  if,  as  Leslie  Stephen  says,  'in  striking  contrast  to 
Butler,  he  is  smooth,  voluble,  and  discursive,'  yet  '  the 
even  flow  of  his  eloquence  is  apt  to  become  soporific.'* 

^  Lucas  Collins,  Butler,  in  '  Philosophical  Classics,'  p.  78. 

a  Dissertation,  p.  204. 

•  English  Thought  in  the  Eightemth  Century,  ii.  57. 


I90         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Shaftesbury,  on  the  other  hand,  is  no  less  concerned 
about  the  form  than  about  the  substance  of  his 
philosophical  work.  Of  all  things  he  abhors  what  he 
calls  the  *  pedantry '  and  *  scholasticism '  of  the  average 
and  professional  philosopher  ;  in  place  of  this  he  strives 
after  '  wit '  and  '  good  humour.'  An  enemy  of  *  en- 
thusiasm,' he  cultivates  the  art  of  satire  or  '  ridicule,' 
which  he  regards  as  the  touchstone  of  truth.  Deeply  im- 
bued with  the  classical  philosophy,  he  attempts  to  revive 
the  dialogue  as  a  form  of  philosophical  discussion.  The 
result,  however,  is  by  no  means  entirely  successful.  His 
writing  strikes  the  modern  reader  as  too  conscious,  and 
not  without  a  pedantry  of  its  own.  It  is  not  only  diffuse, 
reiterative,  and  unmethodical,  but,  as  Fowler  says, '  stilted,' 
marked  by  '  affectation '  and  '  a  falsetto  note.'  Charles 
Lamb  describes  his  style  as  *  lordly '  and  *  inflated  ' :  *he 
seems  to  have  written  with  his  coronet  on,  and  his  earl's 
mantle  before  him.'  Leslie  Stephen  speaks  not  unjustly  of 
*  Shaftesbury's  rather  turbid  eloquence'^  and  Mackintosh 
happily  characterises  the  long  and  ambitious  dialogue.  The 
Moralists^  as  *  a  modern  antique.'  ^  When  compared  not 
only  with  the  dialogues  of  Plato,  after  which  it  was 
modelled,  but  with  those  of  Berkeley,  this  work  is  felt 
to  be  almost  entirely  lacking  in  characterisation  and 
dramatic  movement. 

The  new  answer  to  Hobbes  finds  its  key  in  a  new 
account  of  human  nature,  in  a  new  psychological  interpre- 
tation of  the  'naturalness'  of  virtue.  Virtue  is  the  ex- 
pression of  the  natural  sociability  or  benevolence  of 
man,  rather  than  of  the  universal  *  nature  of  things.' 
The  psychological  method  is  explicitly  substituted  for 
the  rationalistic  method  of  the  earlier  opponents  of  Hobbes. 
Shaftesbury,  no  less  clearly  than  Butler,  finds  the  clue 
to  the  nature  of  virtue  in  the  *  economy '  or  *  constitution  ' 
of  human  nature.     It  is  not  merely  that  in  that  nature 


^  English  Tiioui^ht  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  57. 
•  Dissertation,  p.  162. 


THE  MORALISTS  191 

there  are  social  as  well  as  self-regarding  impulses  or 
affections,  but  that  the  system  of  human  nature  as  a 
whole  points  to  the  subordination  of  the  self-regarding 
to  the  social  affections  as  the  essential  feature  of  the 
'  natural '  or  virtuous  life,  because  the  means  to  the  good 
of  man,  constituted  as  he  is  and  placed  in  a  network  of 
relations  to  his  fellow-men.  *  The  parts  and  proportions  of 
the  mind,  their  mutual  relation  and  dependency,  the  con- 
nexion and  frame  of  those  passions  which  constitute  the 
soul  or  temper,  may  easily  be  understood  by  any  one  who 
thinks  it  worth  his  while  to  study  this  inward  anatomy.'-^ 

It  is  because  man  is  a  rational  being,  '  capable  of  form- 
ing general  notions  of  things,'  that  he  has  the  capacity 
not  merely  of  *  goodness,'  but  of '  virtue '  or  *  merit.'  He 
can  form  such  general  notions  of  actions  and  affections, 
as  well  as  of  objects,  *so  that,  by  means  of  this  reflected 
sense,  there  arises  another  kind  of  affection  towards  those 
very  affections  themselves  which  have  been  already  felt, 
and  are  now  become  the  subject  of  a  new  liking  or 
dislike.'  ^  This  '  moral  sense '  apprehends  the  beauty  or 
deformity,  the  proportion  or  disproportion,  of  actions  and 
affections.  '  It  feels  the  soft  and  harsh,  the  agreeable  and 
disagreeable,  in  the  affections ;  and  finds  a  foul  and  fair, 
a  harmonious  and  a  dissonant,  as  really  and  truly  here,  as 
in  any  musical  numbers,  or  in  the  outward  forms  or 
epresentations  of  sensible  things.  Nor  can  it  withhold 
its  admiration  and  extasy,  its  aversion  and  scorn,  any  more 
in  what  relates  to  one  than  to  the  other  of  these  subjects.'  ^ 

The  guiding  notion  or  standard  of  virtue  is  that  of  '  a 
public  interest ' :  it  is  only  from  the  point  of  view  of 
social  welfare  that  we  discover  '  the  eternal  measures,  and 
immutable  independent  nature  of  worth  and  virtue.'  '  To 
deserve  the  name  of  good  or  virtuous,  a  creature  must 
have  all  his  inclinations  and  affections,  his  dispositions  of 
mind  and  temper,  suitable,  and  agreeing  with  the  good  of 
his  kind,  or  of  that  system  in  which  he  is  included,  and 
of  which  he  constitutes  a  part.  To  stand  thus  well  affected, 

^  Characteristics,  ii.  83.  *  Ibid.,  ii.  28.  ^  Ibid.,  ir.  29. 


192  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

and  to  have  one's  affections  right  and  entire,  not  only  in 
respect  of  one's  self,  but  of  society  and  the  public  ;  this  is 
rectitude,  integrity,  or  virtue.  And  to  be  wanting  in  any 
of  these,  or  to  have  their  contraries,  is  depravity,  corrup- 
tion, and  vice.'  ^  Virtue  implies,  therefore,  the  subordina- 
tion of  the  self-regarding  to  the  social  or  public  affections. 

*  There  being  allow^ed  in  a  creature  such  affections  as  these 
tovv^ards  the  common  Nature,  or  System  of  the  Kind,  to- 
gether with  those  other  which  regard  the  private  Nature, 
or  Self-system  ;  it  will  appear  that  in  following  the  first  of 
these  affections,  the  creature  must  on  many  occasions, 
contradict  and  go  against  the  latter.  How  else  should 
the  species  be  preserved  ? '  ^  Truly  understood,  however, 
virtue  consists  rather  in  the  harmony  of  the  self-regarding 
with  the  social  affections  than  in  the  triumph  of  the  latter 
over  the  former.  The  lesser  whole  of  the  individual's 
own  good  is  included  in  the  larger  whole  or  system  of  the 
social  good.  The  *  Self-affections,  which  lead  only  to  the 
Good  of  the  Private,'  are  no  less  natural  than  those  which 

*  lead  to  the  Good  of  the  Public'  From  both  alike 
Shaftesbury  distinguishes  the  'unnatural  affections,'  which 
tend  neither  to  public  nor  to  private  good.  The  vicious- 
ness  of  the  natural  affections  consists  in  their  excessive  or 
defective  strength  ;  and  he  recognises  that  *as  in  particular 
cases,  public  affection,  on  the  one  hand,  may  be  too  high  ; 
so  private  affection  may,  on  the  other  hand,  be  too  weak. 
For  if  a  creature  be  self-neglectful,  and  insensible  of 
danger ;  or  if  he  want  such  a  degree  of  passion  in  any 
kind,  as  is  useful  to  preserve,  sustain,  or  defend  himself; 
this  must  certainly  be  esteemed  vicious,  in  regard  of  the 
design  and  end  of  nature.' ^  'There  are  two  things 
which  to  a  rational  creature  must  be  horridly  offensive 
and  grievous ;  viz.  "  To  have  the  reflection  in  his  mind 
of  any  unjust  action  or  behaviour,  which  he  knows  to  be 
naturally  odious  and  ill-deserving :  or,  of  any  foolish 
action  or  behaviour,  which  he  knows  to  be  prejudicial 
to  his  own  interest  or  happiness." '  *     Here  we  have  the 

*  Characteristics,  ii.  JJ.  •  Ibid.,  ii.  78, 

9  Ibid.,  ii.  89.  *■  Ibid.,  ii.  119. 


THE   MORALISTS  193 

same  distinction  as  that  subsequently  drawn  by  Butler 
between  conscience  and  self-love ;  and  Shaftesbury  adds, 
*  The  former  of  these  is  alone  properly  called  Conscience  ; 
whether  in  a  moral,  or  religious  sense.' 

Shaftesbury's  great  objection  to  the  theological  ethics  of 
Locke  and  of  popular  opinion  is  that  it  destroys,  with  the 
disinterestedness,  the  reality  of  virtue.  Action  inspired 
by  the  motive  of  reward  or  punishment  is,  because  self- 
interested,  not  truly  virtuous.  Not  until  a  man  '  is  come 
to  have  any  affection  towards  what  is  morally  good,  and 
can  like  or  affect  such  good  for  its  own  sake^  as  good  and 
amiable  in  itself^  can  he  rightly  be  called  'good  and 
virtuous.'^  The  appeal  to  self-interest  by  rewards  and 
punishments  may  be  a  means  of  moral  education  used 
by  God,  as  it  is  used  by  parents  and  guardians  and 
by  the  State  ;  but  its  aim  must  be  to  educate  us  to  the 
disinterested  love  of  virtue  and  of  supreme  Goodness. 
Similarly,  to  make  virtue  dependent  upon  the  will  of 
God  is  to  destroy  the  very  idea  of  virtue,  and  to  make 
the  inference  to  supreme  Goodness  impossible.  *  For 
how  can  Supreme  Goodness  be  intelligible  to  those  who 
know  not  what  Goodness  itself  is  ?  Or  how  can  virtue 
be  understood  to  deserve  reward,  when  as  yet  its  merit 
and  excellence  are  unknown  ?  We  begin  surely  at  the 
wrong  end,  when  we  would  prove  merit  by  favour, 
and  order  by  a  Deity.'  ^  The  alternative  between  a 
theological  and  an  independent  theory  of  ethics  is,  he 
holds,  the  alternative  between  ethical  nominalism  and 
realism.  Shaftesbury's  own  view  is  that  virtue  is  '  really 
something  in  itself  and  in  the  nature  of  things  :  not 
arbitrary  or  factitious  .  .  .  constituted  from  without,  or 
dependent  on  custom,  fancy,  or  will :  not  even  on  the 
Supreme  Will  itself,  which  can  no  way  govern  it :  but 
being  necessarily  good,  is  governed  by  it,  and  ever  uniform 
with  it.'  3 

On  the  other  hand,  Shaftesbury  finds  it  necessary,  in 
order  to  account   for  the   '  obligation  '  to  virtue  or  the 

^  Characteristics,  ii.  66.  *  Ibid.,  ii.  267.  '  Loc.  cit. 

N 


194         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

*  reason  to  embrace  it,'  to  maintain  the  complete  coinci- 
dence between  virtue  and  self-interest,  or  that  *  to  be  well 
affected  towards  the  Public  Interest  and  one's  own,  is  not 
only  consistent,  but  inseparable  :  and  that  Moral  Recti- 
tude, or  Virtue,  must  accordingly  be  the  advantage,  and 
Vice  the  injury  and  disadvantage  of  every  creature.'^ 
He  argues  *(i.)  That  to  have  the  natural,  kindly,  or 
generous  affections  strong  and  powerful  towards  the  good 
of  the  public,  is  to  have  the  chief  means  and  power  of 
self-enjoyment,  and  that  to  want  them,  is  certain  misery 
and  ill  ;  (ii.)  That  to  have  the  private  or  self-affections 
too  strong,  or  beyond  their  degree  of  subordinacy  to  the 
kindly  and  natural,  is  also  miserable  ;  (iii.)  That  to  have 
the  unnatural  affections  ...  is  to  be  miserable  in  the 
highest  degree.'^  It  is  impossible  to  read  his  im- 
pressive and  subtle  argument  without  feeling  how  much 
Butler  must  have  been  indebted  to  Shaftesbury  in  his 
better-known  plea  for  the  superior  wisdom  of  a  rational 
self-love  to  that  excessive  preoccupation  with  our  own 
interest  to  which  a  blind  selfishness  would  prompt  us, 
if  not  also  in  his  theory  of  the  objective  or  disinterested 
character  of  desire. 

In  spite  of  his  insistence  upon  the  harmony  of  virtue 
and  self-interest,  or  of  the  self-regarding  with  the  social 
affections,  Shaftesbury  is  convinced  that  the  good  is  not 
pleasure.  *  When  Will  and  Pleasure  are  synonymous ; 
when  everything  which  pleases  us  is  called  pleasure,  and 
we  never  chuse  or  prefer  but  as  we  please,  'tis  trifling  to 
say, "  Pleasure  is  our  Good."  For  this  has  as  little  meaning 
as  to  say, "  We  chuse  what  we  think  eligible  "  ;  and,  "  We 
are  pleased  with  what  delights  or  pleases  us."  The  ques- 
tion is,  Whether  we  are  rightly  pleased,  and  chuse  as 
we  should  do.'^  The  good  is  not  mere  satisfaction  or 
pleasure,  but  that  which  satisfies  man  as  man.  Shaftes- 
bury clearly  states  the  alternative  between  a  subjective  or 
hedonistic  and  an  objective  or  idealistic  interpretation  of 
Good.     *  Either  that  is  every  man's  good  which  he  fancies, 

'  Characteristics,  ii.  8l.         •  Ibid.,  ii.  98.        »  Ibid.,  ii.  226,  227. 


THE   MORALISTS  195 

and  because  he  fancies  it,  and  is  not  content  without  it : 
or  otherwise,  there  is  that  in  which  the  nature  of  man  is 
satisfied  ;  and  which  alone  must  be  his  good.  If  that  in 
which  the  nature  of  man  is  satisfied,  and  can  rest  con- 
tented, be  alone  his  good  ;  then  he  is  a  fool  who  follows 
that  with  earnestness,  as  his  good,  which  a  man  can  be 
without,  and  yet  be  satisfied  and  contented.'  ^ 

Hutcheson,  while  in  essential  agreement  with  Shaftes- 
bury, differs  from  him  in  the  prominence  assigned  to  the 
*  moral  sense  '  and  in  the  emphasis  placed  upon  benevolence 
as  the  sum  of  virtue.  '  His  principal  design,'  he  tell  us  in 
the  Preface  to  the  *  Inquiry  into  the  Original  of  our  Ideas 
of  Beauty  and  Virtue,' '  is  to  show  that  Human  Nature  was 
not  left  indifferent  in  the  affair  of  Virtue,  to  form  to  itself 
observations  concerning  the  advantage,  or  disadvantage,  of 
actions,  and  accordingly  to  regulate  its  conduct.  .  .  .  The 
Author  of  Nature  has  much  better  furnished  us  for  a 
virtuous  conduct,  than  our  moralists  seem  to  imagine,  by 
almost  as  quick  and  powerful  instructions,  as  we  have  for 
the  preservation  of  our  bodies.  He  has  given  us  strong 
affections  to  be  the  springs  of  each  virtuous  action  ;  and 
made  Virtue  a  lovely  Form,  that  we  might  easily  distin- 
guish it  from  its  contrary,  and  be  made  happy  by  the 
pursuit  of  it.'  We  have  a  '  moral  sense  of  beauty  in 
actions  and  affections,'  *  a  relish  for  a  beauty  in  character, 
in  manners.'  The  aesthetic  aspect  of  morality,  already 
prominent  in  Shaftesbury's  theory,  becomes  therefore 
still  more  prominent  in  that  of  Hutcheson,  who  is  specially 
concerned  to  show  that  virtue  is  not '  austere  and  ungainly,' 
but  beautiful  and  attractive.  Shaftesbury  had  emphasised 
the  rationality,  as  well  as  the  beauty  of  virtue ;  for 
Hutcheson  its  quality  is  purely  aesthetic.  While  he 
carefully  distinguishes  the  doctrine  of  the  '  moral  sense ' 
from  that  of '  innate  ideas,'  the  former  being  simply  that 
we  have  a  natural  susceptibility  to  moral  distinctions  which 
is  developed  and  educated  by  moral  experience,  he  finds 

^  Characteristics,  ii.  436. 


196  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

in  this  susceptibility  the  great  evidence  of  the  natural- 
ness of  virtue,  as  answ^ering  to  *the  very  frame  of  our 
nature.' 

Hutcheson  is  not  satisfied  with  the  affirmation  of  the 
disinterestedness  of  the  *  moral  sense,'  or  approval  of  virtue 
and  disapproval  of  vice.  He  maintains  that  the  content 
of  virtue  is  benevolence,  or  regard  for  the  general  happi- 
ness. '  If  we  examine  all  the  actions  which  are  counted 
amiable  anywhere,  and  inquire  into  the  grounds  upon 
which  they  are  approved,  we  shall  find  that  in  the  opinion 
of  the  person  who  approves  them,  they  always  appear  as 
benevolent,  or  flowing  from  good-will  to  others,  and  a 
study  of  their  happiness.'  ^  As  '  that  action  is  best  which 
procures  the  greatest  happiness  for  the  greatest  numbers,'  ^ 
so  is  that  agent  most  virtuous  the  purity  of  whose  in- 
tention to  minister  to  the  greatest  general  happiness  is 
least  corrupted  by  thoughts  of  self-seeking. 

It  would  seem  to  follow  that  the  life  of  ideal  virtue  ex- 
cludes regard  for  our  own  good  or  happiness.  Hutcheson 
holds,  however,  that  actions  proceeding  from  self-love  are 
strictly  of  neutral  moral  quality,  innocent  rather  than 
vicious.  'The  actions  which  flow  solely  from  self-love, 
and  yet  evidence  no  want  of  benevolence,  having  no  hurt- 
ful effects  upon  others,  seem  perfectly  indifferent  in  a 
moral  sense,  and  neither  raise  the  love  or  hatred  of  the 
observer.'  ^  They  belong  to  the  sphere  of  natural, 
rather  than  to  that  of  moral  good.  But  the  one  sphere 
may  easily  overlap  the  other,  and  natural  good  may 
become  moral.  '  He  who  pursues  his  own  private  good 
with  an  intention  also  to  concur  with  that  constitution 
which  tends  to  the  good  of  the  whole  ;  and  much  more 
he  who  promotes  his  own  good,  with  a  direct  view  of 
making  himself  more  capable  of  serving  God,  or  doing 
good  to  mankind,  acts  not  only  innocently,  but  also 
honourably  and  virtuously  :  for  in  both  these  cases  bene- 
volence concurs  with  self-love  to  excite  him  to  the 
action.     And   thus  a  neglect  of  our  own  good  may  be 

*  Inquiry^  p.  166.  *  Ibid.,  p.  181.  3  Ibid.,  p,  175. 


THE   MORALISTS  197 

morally  evil,  and  argue  a  want  of  benevolence  toward 
the  whole.'  ^  Nay,  he  goes  on  to  argue,  self-love,  as  such, 
may  be  interpreted  as,  in  the  last  analysis,  a  form  of 
benevolence.  Since  'every  moral  agent  justly  considers 
himself  as  a  part  of  this  rational  system  which  may  be 
useful  to  the  whole,  ...  he  may  be,  in  part,  an  object  of 
his  own  benevolence.  ...  A  man  surely  of  the  strongest 
benevolence  may  justly  treat  himself  as  he  would  do  a 
third  person,  who  was  a  competitor  of  equal  merit  with 
the  other  ;  and  as  his  preferring  one  to  another,  in  such  a 
case,  would  argue  no  weakness  of  benevolence,  so,  no  more 
would  he  evidence  it  by  preferring  himself  to  a  man  of 
only  equal  abilities.'  ^  He  also  follows  Shaftesbury  in 
maintaining  the  coincidence  of  benevolence  with  a  wise 
self-love  ('universal  benevolence  tends  to  the  happi- 
ness of  the  benevolent'),  and  distinguishes  'calm  self- 
love  '  from  '  particular  passions,'  and  '  calm  good-will ' 
or  benevolence  from  '  passionate  love.' 

While  Butler  is  concerned,  like  Shaftesbury  and  Hutche- 
son,  to  vindicate  the  '  naturalness'  of  benevolent  or  altru- 
istic conduct,  he  is  led  by  the  undue  emphasis  placed  by 
Hutcheson  upon  benevolence  as  the  sum  of  virtue  to  insist, 
with  Shaftesbury,  upon  theclaimsof  self-love  as  an  element  in 
the  life  of  complete  virtue.  His  Sermons  were  first  published 
in  the  year  after  the  publication  of  Hutcheson's  Inquiry., 
but  had  been  written  during  the  preceding  eight  years. 
In  the  Dissertation^  '  Of  the  Nature  of  Virtue,'  appended 
to  the  Analogy,  published  in  1736,  he  explicitly  repudiates 
the  doctrine,  held  by  'some  of  great  and  distinguished 
merit,'  that '  the  whole  of  virtue  consists  in  singly  aiming, 
according  to  the  best  of  their  judgment,  at  promoting  the 
happiness  of  mankind  in  the  present  state  ;  and  the  whole 
of  vice,  in  doing  what  they  foresee,  or  might  foresee,  is 
likely  to  produce  an  overbalance  of  unhappiness  in  it ; 
than  which  mistakes,  none  can  be  conceived  more  terrible. 
For  it  is  certain  that  some  of  the  most  shocking  instances 

^  Inquiry,  p.  176.  '  Ibid.,  pp.  1 7 7-8. 


198         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

of  injustice,  adultery,  murder,  perjury,  and  even  of  persecu- 
tion, may,  in  many  supposable  cases,  not  have  the  appear- 
ance of  being  likely  to  produce  an  overbalance  of  misery 
in  the  present  state  ;  perhaps  sometimes  may  have  the 
contrary  appearance.  .  .  .  The  happiness  of  the  world  is 
the  concern  of  Him,  Who  is  the  Lord  and  the  Proprietor 
of  it :  nor  do  we  know  what  we  are  about,  when  we 
endeavour  to  promote  the  good  of  mankind  in  any  ways, 
but  those  which  He  has  directed  ;  that  is  indeed  in  all 
ways  not  contrary  to  veracity  and  justice.  .  .  .  And 
though  it  is  our  business  and  our  duty  to  endeavour, 
within  the  bounds  of  veracity  and  justice,  to  contribute  to 
the  ease,  convenience,  and  even  cheerfulness  and  diversion 
of  our  fellow-creatures  ;  yet,  from  our  short  views,  it  is 
greatly  uncertain,  whether  this  endeavour  will  in  particular 
instances  produce  an  overbalance  of  happiness  upon  the 
whole  ;  since  so  many  and  distant  things  must  come  into 
the  account.' 

In  place  of  such  a  utilitarian  estimate  of  virtue  Butler 
affirms  an  intuitional  theory.  *  The  fact  appears  to  be, 
that  we  are  constituted  so  as  to  condemn  falsehood,  un- 
provoked violence,  injustice,  and  to  approve  of  benevolence 
to  some  preferably  to  others,  abstracted  from  all  considera- 
tion, which  conduct  is  likeliest  to  produce  an  overbalance 
of  happiness  or  misery.'  Virtue,  thus  understood,  includes 
benevolence,  but  is  not  synonymous  with  it.  In  the 
Preface  to  the  second  edition  of  the  Sermons,  published 
in  1729,  four  years  after  the  appearance  of  Hutcheson's 
Inquiry,  he  says :  *  Everything  is  what  it  is,  and  not 
another  thing.  The  goodness  or  badness  of  actions  does 
not  arise  from  hence,  that  the  epithet,  interested  or  dis- 
interested, may  be  applied  to  them,  any  more  than  any 
other  indifferent  epithet,  suppose  inquisitive  or  jealous, 
may  or  may  not  be  applied  to  them  ;  not  from  their 
being  attended  with  present  or  future  pleasure  or  pain  ; 
but  from  their  being  what  they  are ;  namely,  what 
becomes  such  creatures  as  we  are,  what  the  state  of  the 
case  requires,  or  the  contrary.  Or,  in  other  words, 
we  may  judge  and  determine,  that  an  action  is  good  or 


THE   MORALISTS  199 

evil,  before  we  so  much  as  consider,  whether  it  be  in- 
terested or  disinterested.'  ^ 

Butler  is  not  content  with  the  denial  of  the  identity 
of  benevolence   and    virtue ;    he    insists  upon   the  equal 
claims  of  self-love  or  self-interest  as  a  principle  of  virtuous 
action.     '  Self-love  in  its  due  degree  is  as  just  and  morally 
good  as  any  affection  whatever.'^     The  cause  of  vice  is 
to  be  sought  rather  in  the  undue  strength  of  *the  par- 
ticular  passions'   than   in    self-love.     *Upon   the    whole, 
if  the  generality   of  mankind  were  to   cultivate  within 
themselves  the   principle   of  self-love  ;    if  they  were   to 
accustom  themselves  often  to  set  down  and  consider  what 
was  the  greatest  happiness  they  were  capable  of  attaining 
for  themselves  in  this  life,  and  if  self-love  were  so  strong 
and  prevalent,  as  that  they  would  uniformly  pursue  this 
their  supposed  chief  temporal  good,  without  being  diverted 
from  it  by  any  particular  passion,  it  would  manifestly  pre- 
vent  numberless  follies  and  vices.     This  was  in  a  great 
measure  the  Epicurean  system  of  philosophy.     It  is  indeed 
by  no  means  the  religious  or  even   moral  institution  of 
life.     Yet,  with   all   the    mistakes   men   would    fall    into 
about    interest,  it  would    be  less   mischievous   than    the 
extravagances  of  mere  appetite,  will,  and   pleasure  ;    for 
certainly  self-love,  though  confined  to  the  interest  of  this 
life,  is,  of  the  two,  a  much   better  guide  than   passion, 
which  has  absolutely  no  bound  or  measure,  but  what  is 
set    to    it    by    this    self-love,    or    moral    considerations.' ' 
Again,    in    the    Dissertation^    he    says :     '  It   should    seem 
that  a  due  concern  about  our  own  interest  or  happiness, 
and  a  reasonable  endeavour  to   secure   and   promote   it, 
which  is,  I  think,  very  much  the  meaning  of  the  word 
prudenccy  in   our  language ;    it   should  seem   that   this  is 
virtue,  and  the  contrary  behaviour  faulty  and  blamable  ; 
since,  in  the  calmest  way  of  reflection,  we  approve  of 
the  first,  and  condemn  the  other  conduct,  both  in  our- 
selves and  others.'     Hence  he  concludes  that  *  prudence 
is  a  species  of  virtue,  and  folly  of  vice  :  meaning  by  folly 

^  Sermons,  Preface,  sect.  39  (Bernard's  ed.)-  "  Loc.  cit. 

'  Sermons,  Preface,  sects.  39-41. 


200         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

somewhat  quite  different  from  mere  incapacity,  a  thought- 
less want  of  that  regard  and  attention  to  our  own  happi- 
ness, which  we  had  capacity  for.'  *  The  faculty  within 
us,  which  is  the  judge  of  actions,  approves  of  prudent 
actions,  and  disapproves  imprudent  ones.' 

Self-love  and  benevolence,  then,  or  the  consideration 
of  our  own  happiness  and  that  of  others,  as  such,  are 
for  Butler  two  equally  rational  principles  of  action,  whose 
office  is  to  regulate  the  particular  passions  and  affections. 

*  As  human  nature  is  nbt  one  simple  uniform  thing,  but  a 
composition  of  various  parts,  body,  spirit,  appetites,  par- 
ticular passions,  and  affections  ;  for  each  of  which  reason- 
able self-love  would  lead  men  to  have  due  regard,  and 
make  suitable  provision  :  so  society  consists  of  various 
parts,  to  which  we  stand  in  different  respects  and  rela- 
tions; and  just  benevolence  would  as  surely  lead  us  to 
have  due  regard  to  each  of  these,  and  behave  as  the 
respective  relations  require.'  ^  Action  in  accordance  with 
these  principles  is  natural  in  another  sense  than  that  in 
which  action  in  accordance  with  a  particular  appetite  or 
affection  is  natural :  it  is  action  in  accordance  with  the 
constitution  of  human  nature  as  a  whole,  not  merely 
in  accordance  with  present  impulse.  In  the  case  of 
benevolence,  as  well  as  in  that  of  self-love,  it  is  necessary 
to  distinguish  the  rational  from  the  *  passionate '  principle. 

*  When  benevolence  is  said  to  be  the  sum  -  of  virtue,  it 
is  not  spoken  of  as  a  blind  propension,  but  as  a  principle 
in  reasonable  creatures,  and  so  to  be  directed  by  their 
reason  :  for  reason  and  reflection  comes  into  our  notion 
of  a  moral  agent  And  that  will  lead  us  to  consider  dis- 
tant consequences,  as  well  as  the  immediate  tendency  of 
an  action  :  it  will  teach  us  that  the  care  of  some  persons, 
suppose  children  and  families,  is  particularly  committed  to 
our  charge  by  Nature  and  Providence ;  as  also  that  there 
are  other  circumstances,  suppose  friendship  or  former  obliga- 
tions, which  require  that  we  do  good  to  some,  preferably 
to  others.  .  .  .  Thus,  upon  supposition  that  it  were  in 

*  Sermon  xii.  sect.  29. 


THE   MORALISTS  201 

the  strictest  sense  true,  without  limitation,  that  benevo- 
lence includes  in  it  all  virtues ;  yet  reason  must  come  in 
as  its  guide  and  director,  in  order  to  attain  its  own  end, 
the  end  of  benevolence,  the  greatest  public  good.'  ^ 

It  is  in  the  ability  to  guide  his  conduct,  not  merely  by 
'  instincts  and  propensions,'  but  by  reflection  upon  the 
results  of  following  such  natural  impulses,  that  Butler  sees 
the  distinctive  element  in  human  nature.  The  natural 
impulse  rests  in  its  object  as  an  end  or  good  ;  reflective 
self-love  and  benevolence  regard  the  objects  of  natural 
impulse  as  means  to  the  good  or  happiness  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  other  individuals  respectively.  Self-loving 
and  benevolent  actions  are,  therefore,  species  of  virtue, 
as  conduct  determined  by  impulse,  and  contrary  to  these 
principles,  is  a  species  of  vice.  These  principles  are 
however,  only  two  species  of  the  genus  virtue.  The 
principle  of  virtuous  conduct,  as  such,  is  conscience,  which 
considers  not  the  consequences  of  actions,  but  their  ap- 
propriateness or  inappropriateness  to  human  nature  as  a 
constitution  or  economy.  It  checks  and  limits  the  autho- 
rity of  self-love  and  benevolence  by  considerations  peculiar 
to  itself,  considerations  not  of  happiness  or  misery,  but  of 
right  and  wrong.  '  Let  any  plain  honest  man,  before  he 
engages  in  any  course  of  action,  ask  himself:  Is  this  I  am 
going  about  right,  or  is  it  wrong  ?  Is  it  good,  or  is  it 
evil  ?  I  do  not  in  the  least  doubt,  but  that  this  question 
would  be  answered  agreeably  to  truth  and  virtue,  by 
almost  any  fair  man  in  almost  any  circumstances.'  ^ 

The  aesthetic  and  emotional  element  in  the  'moral  sense  ' 
of  Shaftesbury  and  Hutcheson  entirely  disappears ;  con- 
science is  for  Butler  a  purely  rational  principle.  The  ques- 
tion of  obligation  is  also  for  the  first  time  answered  without 
hesitation  in  purely  rational  terms.  *  Allowing  that  man- 
kind hath  the  rule  of  right  within  himself,  yet  it  may  be 
asked,  "  What  obligations  are  we  under  to  attend  and 
follow  it  ? "  I  answer  :  it  has  been  proved  that  man  by 
his  nature  is  a   law  to    himself,  without    the    particular 

^  Sermon  xii.  sect.  27.  *  Sermon  iii.  sect.  4. 


202         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

distinct  consideration  of  the  positive  sanctions  of  that 
law  ;  the  rewards  and  punishments  which  we  feel,  and 
those  which  from  the  light  of  reason  we  have  ground  to 
believe  are  annexed  to  it.  The  question  then  carries  its 
own  answer  along  with  it.  Your  obligation  to  obey  this 
law,  is  its  being  the  law  of  your  nature.  That  your 
conscience  approves  of  and  attests  to  such  a  course  of 
action,  is  itself  alone  an  obligation.  Conscience  does 
not  only  offer  itself  to  show  us  the  way  we  should  walk 
in,  but  it  likewise  carries  its  own  authority  with  it,  that 
it  is  our  natural  guide ;  the  guide  assigned  us  by  the 
Author  of  our  nature  :  it  therefore  belongs  to  our  con- 
dition of  being,  it  is  our  duty  to  walk  in  that  path,  and 
follow  this  guide,  without  looking  about  to  see  whether 
we  may  not  possibly  forsake  them  with  impunity.'^  It 
is  here  that  Butler  finds  the  theory  of  Shaftesbury  inade- 
quate :  that  writer  has  failed  to  follow  out  the  implication 
of  his  own  view  that  virtue  is  determined  by  the  con- 
stitution of  human  nature.  *  The  very  constitution  of 
our  nature  requires,  that  we  bring  our  whole  conduct 
before  this  superior  faculty ;  wait  its  determination  ; 
enforce  upon  ourselves  its  authority,  and  make  it  the 
business  of  our  lives,  as  it  is  absolutely  the  whole  business 
of  a  moral  agent,  to  conform  ourselves  to  it.'  ^  Even  if 
the  obligations  of  conscience  should  conflict  with  those 
of  self-love,  the  latter  must  yield  unquestioningly  to 
the  former.  We  are  not,  in  such  a  case,  *  under  two 
contrary  obligations,  i.e.  under  none  at  all.'  *  The  obliga- 
tion on  the  side  of  interest  really  does  not  remain.  For 
the  natural  authority  of  the  principle  of  reflection  is  an 
obligation  the  most  near  and  intimate,  the  most  certain 
and  known  ;  whereas  the  contrary  obligation  can  at  the 
utmost  appear  no  more  than  probable ;  since  no  man  can 
be  certain  in  any  circumstances  that  vice  is  his  interest  in 
the  present  world,  much  less  can  he  be  certain  against 
another ;  and  thus  the  certain  obligation  would  entirely 
supersede  and  destroy  the  uncertain  one.*     '  The  greatest 

*  Sermon  iii.  sect.  5.  *  Sermons,  Preface,  sect,  25. 


THE    MORALISTS  203 

degree  of  scepticism  .  .  .  will  still  leave  men  under  the 
strictest  moral  obligations,  whatever  their  opinion  be  con- 
cerning the  happiness  of  virtue.'^ 

Yet  Butler  finds  it  necessary  to  affirm  'the  happy- 
tendency  of  virtue.'  He  is  especially  anxious  to  show  the 
complete  coincidence  of  benevolence  and  self-love  :  that 
'  though  benevolence  and  self-love  are  different ;  though 
the  former  tends  most  directly  to  public  good,  and  the 
latter  to  private,  yet  they  are  so  perfectly  coincident,  that 
the  greatest  satisfactions  to  ourselves  depend  upon  our 
having  benevolence  in  a  due  degree ;  and  that  self-love  is 
one  chief  security  of  our  right  behaviour  towards  society.'  ^ 
His  chief  contribution  here  lies  in  his  demonstration  of 
the  disinterested  character  of  all  desire,  directed  as  it  is, 
not  to  our  own  pleasure  or  satisfaction,  but  to  the 
attainment  of  its  own  appropriate  object.  Otherwise  he 
does  little  more  than  repeat  the  arguments  of  Shaftes- 
bury and  Hutcheson  about  the  happiness  of  benevolent, 
as  compared  with  that  of  self-seeking,  activity.  It  is  to  be 
remembered  that  Butler's  aim  in  thus  seeking  to  reconcile 
benevolence,  and  virtue  generally,  with  the  apparently 
opposing  claims  of  self-interest,  as  well  as  in  emphasising 
the  principle  of  self-love,  is,  as  he  himself  says,  '  to  obviate 
that  scorn  which  one  sees  rising  upon  the  faces  of  people 
who  are  said  to  know  the  world,  when  mention  is  made 
of  a  disinterested,  generous  or  public-spirited  action.'^ 
Butler's  purpose  in  the  Sermons  was  rather  practical  than 
purely  theoretical;  and  in  his  case  as  in  others,  'the 
doctrine  of  moral  consequences  was  had  recourse  to  by 
the  divines  and  moralists  as  the  most  likely  remedy  of 
the  prevailing  licentiousness.'  * 

The  coincidence  of  virtue  and  happiness,  the  harmony 
of  conscience  and  self-love,  is  however,  at  best,  uncertain, 
so  far  as  the  present  world  is  concerned.  'It  must  be 
owned  a  thing  of  difficulty  to  weigh  and  balance  pleasures 
and  uneasinesses,  each  amongst  themselves,  and  also 
against  each  other,  so  as  to  make  an  estimate  with  any 

'  Sermons,  Pref.,  sects.  26,  27.  ^  Sermon  i.  sect.  6. 

'  Sermons,  Pref.,  sect.  38.  *  Mark  Pattison,  Essays,  ii.  114. 


204         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

exactness,  of  the  overplus  of  happiness  on  the  side  of 
virtue.  And  it  is  not  impossible  that,  amidst  the  infinite 
disorders  of  the  world,  there  may  be  exceptions  to  the 
happiness  of  virtue.'  ^  *  Virtue,  to  borrow  the  Christian 
allusion,  is  militant  here  ;  and  various  untoward  accidents 
contribute  to  its  being  often  overborne :  but  it  may 
combat  with  greater  advantage  hereafter,  and  prevail 
completely,  and  enjoy  its  consequent  rewards,  in  some 
future  states.'  ^  Nay,  it  follows  from  the  moral  per- 
fection of  God  '  that  virtue  must  be  the  happiness,  and 
vice  the  misery,  of  every  creature  ;  and  that  regularity 
and  order  and  right  cannot  but  prevail  finally  in  a 
universe  under  His  government.' ^  As  against' the  super- 
ficial optimism  of  the  deists,  and  more  especially  of  Shaftes- 
bury, Butler  emphasises  the  '  difficulties '  which  beset 
our  interpretation  of  the  moral  order,  and  insists  that, 
since  the  system  of  nature  is  to  be  traced  to  the  same 
Author  as  the  system  of  religion,  natural  and  revealed, 
the  same  kind  of  difficulties  are  to  be  expected  in 
the  latter  as  in  the  former  sphere.  The  exhibition  of 
this  *  analogy'  is  the  aim  of  his  great  apology  for  the 
Christian  faith.  The  defence  rests  upon  the  inevitable 
limitations  of  human  knowledge,  which  imply  that  such 
*  difficulties '  must  always  exist  for  us.  His  aim  is  not  to 
prove  the  rationality  of  Christianity  or  its  certain  truth, 
but  merely  its  credibility,  its  probability. 

Probability,  not  certainty,  he  maintains,  is  the  guide 
of  human  life.  He  recalls  to  a  dogmatic  and  rationalistic 
age  Locke's  lesson  of  the  deficiency  of  man's  knowledge 
and  of  the  indispensable  part  which  '  opinion,'  more  or  less 
probable,  must  play  in  the  life  of  such  a  being  as  man. 
'  Probable  evidence,  in  its  very  nature,  affords  but  an 
imperfect  kind  of  information  ;  and  is  to  be  considered 
as  relative  only  to  beings  of  limited  capacities.  For 
nothing  which  is  the  possible  object  of  knowledge,  whether 
past,  present,  or  future,  can  be  probable  to  an  infinite 
Intelligence  ;  since  it  cannot  but  be  discerned  absolutely 

^  Analogy,  pt.  i.  ch.  iii.  sect.  5  (Bernard). 
'  Ibid.,  pt.  I.  cti.  iii.  sect.  20. 
'  Ibid.f  Introd.,  sect.  10. 


THE   MORALISTS  205 

as  it  is  in  itself,  certainly  true,  or  certainly  false.     But  to 
Us,  probability  is  the  very  guide  of  life.'  ^ 

The  characteristic  lesson  of  the  Baconian  and  the 
Lockian  philosophy,  that  of  the  dependence  of  knowledge 
upon  experience,  is  reasserted  by  Butler,  in  opposition 
to  the  rationalism  of  his  own  age.  *  Forming  our  notions 
of  the  constitution  and  government  of  the  world  upon 
reasoning,  without  foundation  for  the  principles  which 
we  assume,  whether  from  the  attributes  of  God,  or  any- 
thing else,  is  building  a  world  upon  hypothesis  like  Des 
Cartes.  .  .  .  But  it  must  be  allowed  just,  to  join  abstract 
reasonings  with  the  observation  of  facts,  and  argue  from 
such  facts  as  are  known,  to  others  that  are  like  them  ; 
from  that  part  of  the  Divine  government  over  intelligent 
creatures  which  comes  under  our  view,  to  that  larger  and 
more  general  government  over  them  which  is  beyond  it ; 
and  from  what  is  present,  to  collect  what  is  likely,  credible, 
or  not  incredible,  will  be  hereafter.'^  His  final  objection 
to  a  priori  argumentation  is  that  '  we  have  not  faculties 
for  this  kind  of  speculation.' '  Human  reason  is  not 
tainted  with  any  incurable  weakness.  We  must  beware 
of  '  vilifying  the  faculty  of  reason  which  is  "  the  candle 
of  the  Lord  within  us,"  though  it  can  afford  no  light 
where  it  does  not  shine ;  nor  judge,  when  it  has  no 
principles  to  judge  upon.'  ^  It  requires  the  premises  of 
fact  as  a  basis  for  its  procedure.  We  must  always  start 
with  *the  known  constitution  and  course  of  things,' 
'  the  constitution  of  nature  is  as  it  is ' ;  *  things  are  what 
they  are,  and  their  consequences  will  be  what  they  will 
be  ; '  'it  is  fit  things  be  stated  and  considered  as  they 
really  are.'  So  far  as  the  ability  to  predict  the  course 
of  things,  apart  from  experience,  is  concerned,  our 
ignorance  is  profound.  'Any  one  thing  whatever  may, 
for  ought  we  know  to  the  contrary,  be  a  necessary  con- 
dition to  any  other.' ^  'It  is  indeed  in  general  no  more 
than  effects,  that  the  most  knowing  are  acquainted  with  ; 

^  Analogy,  Introd.,  sect.  3.      ^  Ibid.,   Introd.,  sect.  7. 
*  Ibid.,  Introd.,  sect.  10.       *  Ibid.,  pt.  ii.,  Concl.,  sect.  2. 
^  Ibid.,  pt.  i.  ch.  vii.  sect.  3. 


2o6         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

for  as  to  causes,  they  are  as  entirely  in  the  dark  as  the 
most  ignorant.  What  are  the  laws  by  which  matter  acts 
upon  matter,  but  certain  effects ;  which  some,  having 
observed  to  be  frequently  repeated,  have  reduced  to 
general  rules  ? '  ^ 

In  such  sentences  Butler  seems  to  anticipate  the 
thorough-going  empiricism  of  Hume.  But  it  never 
occurs  to  him  to  deduce  Hume's  sceptical  conclusion 
from  the  merely  empirical  character  of  human  knowledge. 
The  conclusion  he  draws  is  rather  Locke's  than  Hume's. 
*  After  all,  the  same  account  is  to  be  given,  why  we  were 
placed  in  these  circumstances  of  ignorance,  as  why  nature 
has  not  furnished  us  with  wings ;  namely,  that  we  were 
designed  to  be  inhabitants  of  this  earth.  I  am  afraid 
we  think  too  highly  of  ourselves ;  of  our  rank  in  the 
creation,  and  of  what  is  due  to  us.  What  sphere  of 
action,  what  business  is  assigned  to  man,  that  he  has  not 
capacities  and  knowledge  fully  equal  to  ?  .  .  .  If  to 
acquire  knowledge  were  our  proper  end,  we  should  indeed 
be  but  poorly  provided  :  but  if  somewhat  else  be  our 
business  and  duty,  we  may,  notwithstanding  our  ignor- 
ance, be  well  enough  furnished  for  it ;  and  the  observation 
of  our  ignorance  may  be  of  assistance  to  us  in  the  dis- 
charge of  it.'  2  '  Since  the  constitution  of  nature,  and 
the  methods  and  designs  of  Providence  in  the  government 
of  the  world,  are  above  our  comprehension,  we  should 
acquiesce  in,  and  rest  satisfied  with,  our  ignorance,  turn 
our  thoughts  from  that  which  is  above  and  beyond  us,  and 
apply  ourselves  to  that  which  is  level  to  our  capacities,  and 
which  is  our  real  business  and  concern.  Knowledge  is 
not  our  proper  happiness,'^  Like  Bacon  and  Locke, 
Butler  finds  the  measure  of  the  value  of  knowledge  in  its 
practical  utility,  in  its  significance  for  action.  '  Men  of 
deep  research  and  curious  inquiry  should  just  be  put  in 
mind,  not  to  mistake  what  they  are  doing.  If  their 
discoveries  serve  the  cause  of  virtue  and  religion,  in  the 
way  of  proof,  motive  to  practice,  or  assistance  in  it ;  or  if 

^  Sermon  xv.  sect  5.  *  Ibid.,  sect.  10.  '  Ibid,,  sect.  16, 


THE   MORALISTS  207 

they  tend  to  render  life  less  unhappy,  and  promote  its 
satisfactions ;  then  they  are  most  usefully  employed  :  but 
bringing  things  to  light,  alone  and  of  itself,  is  of  no 
manner  of  use,  any  otherwise  than  as  an  entertainment  or 
diversion.  Neither  is  this  at  all  amiss,  if  it  does  not  take 
up  the  time  which  should  be  employed  in  better  work. 
But  it  is  evident  that  there  is  another  mark  set  up  for  us 
to  aim  at ;  another  end  appointed  us  to  direct  our  lives  to  ; 
an  end,  which  the  most  knowing  may  fail  of,  and  the  most 
ignorant  arrive  at.  .  .  .  The  only  knowledge,  which  is 
of  any  avail  to  us,  is  that  which  teaches  us  our  duty,  or 
assists  us  in  the  discharge  of  it.  .  .  .  Our  province  is  virtue 
and  religion,  life  and  manners  ;  the  science  of  improving 
the  temper,  and  making  the  heart  better.  This  is  the 
field  assigned  us  to  cultivate.  .  .  .  He  who  should  find 
out  one  rule  to  assist  us  in  this  work,  would  deserve 
infinitely  better  of  mankind,  than  all  the  improvers  of  other 
knowledge  put  together.'  ^ 

The  argument  of  the  Analogy  belongs  rather  to  the 
province  of  Christian  apologetics  than  to  that  of  philo- 
sophy proper.  It  is  concerned,  moreover,  with  a  now 
antiquated  controversy  ;  as  an  argumentum  ad  hominem  to 
the  deists  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it  has  lost  most  of  its 
interest  for  us.  As  Matthew  Arnold  finely  expressed  it, 
*  It  has  the  effect  upon  me,  as  I  contemplate  it,  of  a  stately 
and  severe  fortress,  with  thick  and  high  walls,  built  of  old 
to  control  the  kingdom  of  evil ; — but  the  gates  are  open, 
and  the  guards  gone.'  ^  It  is  unfair  and  beside  the  point 
to  criticise  it  as  a  metaphysical  argument,  and  to  remark 
Butler's  *  feebleness  in  dealing  with  purely  metaphysical 
questions.'  ^  He  never  deals  with  purely  metaphysical 
questions.  It  is  true  that  *  he  has  taken  for  granted  .  .  . 
the  answers  to  the  most  vital  questions  of  philosophy  '  j  * 
but  he  has  done  so  deliberately,  because  on  these  vital 
questions  of  philosophy — the  questions  of  the  existence  of 

^  Sermon  xv.  sect.  i6. 

*  Last  Essays  on  Church  and  Religion,  p.  140. 

^  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century^  i.  298. 

*  Ibid.,  i.  304. 


2o8         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

God  as  not  only  the  Creator  but  the  moral  Governor  of 
the  world,  the  freedom  of  man  as  a  moral  agent,  his  per- 
sonality, and  the  future  life  of  the  individual — there  was  no 
difference  of  opinion  between  himself  and  his  opponents. 
His  only  difference  with  them  was  on  the  question  of 
the  credibility  of  a  Revelation,  and  therefore  of  Christi- 
anity as  a  religious  system  ;  and  Butler's  whole  effort  is 
directed  to  convince  them  that,  if  they  are  to  be  con- 
sistent with  the  views  of  God,  of  nature,  and  of  man  which 
they  share  with  him,  they  must  admit  the  credibility  of 
the  Christian  Revelation,  and  therefore  the  reasonableness 
of  acting  on  the  hypothesis  of  its  truth. 

2.  Association  and  Sympathy  as  Explanations  of  the  Moral 
Sense  :  Hartley  and  Adam  Smith 

The  doctrine  of  the  ultimateness  and  simplicity  of 
the  *  moral  sense,'  common  to  Shaftesbury,  Hutcheson, 
and  Butler,  is  repudiated  by  Hartley  and  Adam  Smith, 
the  former  explaining  it  in  terms  of  Association,  the 
latter  in  terms  of  Sympathy.  In  the  Preface  to  the 
Observations  on  Man^  published  in  1749,  Hartley  ac- 
knowledges his  indebtedness  to  an  earlier  writer,  the 
Rev.  John  Gay,  who,  in  a  *  Dissertation  concerning  the 
Principle  and  Criterion  of  Virtue  and  the  Origin  of 
the  Passions,'  prefixed  to  Law's  translation  of  King's 
Origin  of  Evil  (1731),  had  *  asserted  the  possibility 
of  deducing  all  our  intellectual  pleasures  and  pains  from 
association.'  'This  put  me  upon  considering  the  power 
of  association.  .  .  From  enquiring  into  the  power  of 
association  I  was  led  to  examine  both  its  consequences, 
in  respect  of  morality  and  religion,  and  its  physical 
cause.'  Gay's  little  work  is  really  of  great  importance 
for  the  doctrines  both  of  Association  ism  and  of  Utili- 
tarianism. The  *  moral  sense '  and  '  public  affections,' 
to  which  Hutcheson  had  so  confidently  appealed,  are 
not,  he  argues,  original  instincts.  To  regard  them  as 
such  is,  he  thinks,  '  rather  cutting  the  knot  than  untying 
|t.'     The   ultimate   end   to    which    both   point   is  '  our 


THE   MORALISTS  209 

private  happiness,*  and  *  whenever  this  end  is  not  per- 
ceived, they  are  to  be  accounted  for  from  the  Association 
of  Ideas,  and  may  properly  enough  be  called  Habits.* 
*  These  approbations  and  aiFections  are  not  innate  or 
implanted  in  us  by  way  of  instinct,  but  are  all  acquired, 
being  fairly  deducible  from  supposing  only  sensible  and 
rational  creatures  dependent  on  each  other  for  their 
happiness.'  The  association  of  objects  and  actions  with 
the  pleasures  and  pains  which  result  from  them  not 
only  accounts  for  the  transposition  of  ends  and  means, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  love  of  money,  but,  as  this  case 
also  illustrates,  may  persist  after  the  ends  to  which  they 
minister  are  forgotten  or  even  abandoned. 

Of  Hartley,  Mackintosh  justly  observes  that  '  his  style 
is  entitled  to  no  praise  but  that  of  clearness,  and  a 
simplicity  of  diction,  through  which  is  visible  a  singular 
simplicity  of  mind.'  ^  He  has  no  -  faculty  of  illustra- 
tion, and  his  work  is  deformed  by  an  affectation  of  the 
method  of  geometrical  demonstration,  reminiscent  of  the 
previous  century.  Its  interest  and  value  are  also  injured 
by  its  rather  clumsy  but  persistent  effort  to  connect 
mental  phenomena  with  the  *  vibrations'  and  *vibrati- 
uncles'  in  the  *  medullary  substance'  of  the  brain  which 
form  their  physical  concomitants.  The  chief  influences 
to  be  traced  in  his  thinking  are  those  of  Locke  and 
Newton  ;  and  it  is  rather  the  ideal  of  the  Newtonian 
physics  than  than  of  the  Lockian  psychology  that  is 
decisive.  While  he  seeks,  under  the  influence  of  Locke, 
to  reduce  the  complexity  of  the  mental  life  to  its  origin 
in  sensation,  holding  that  '  reflection  is  not  a  distinct 
source,  as  Mr.  Locke  makes  it,'  ^  he  also  *  seeks  to  do 
for  human  nature  what  Newton  did  for  the  solar  system. 
Association  is  for  man  what  gravitation  is  for  the 
planets.'^  At  the  same  time,  it  is  clear  that  he  *was 
hardly  alive  to  the  tendency  of  his  own  method.'  * 
That  tendency  clearly  is  in  the  direction  of  the  materialism 

^  Dissertation,  p.  253.  2  Observations,  i.  360. 

^  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  66. 

*  Ibid.,  i.  68, 

Q 


2IO         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

to  which  it  was  reduced  by  Priestley  and  Erasmus 
Darwin.  It  is  perhaps  not  going  too  far  to  say,  with 
Stephen,  that  *  his  system  clearly  renders  a  soul  a  super- 
fluity, if  not  an  anomaly,'  that  'the  will,  the  thoughts, 
and  the  emotions,  not  only  result  from,  but,  as  it  would 
seem,  are  "  vibratiuncles "  * ;  ^  and  while  he  insists  upon 
the  disparateness  of  the  psychical  and  the  physical 
phenomena,  he  frankly  accepts,  as  the  logical  consequence 
of  '  the  doctrines  of  association  and  mechanism,'  the 
necessity  of  human  actions,  the  argument  for  which  has 
never  been  better  stated.  But  it  is  impossible  to  reconcile 
his  undiscriminating  acceptance  of  theological  dogma  with 
his  scientific  method  ;  he  is  truly  described  by  his  son,^ 
as  *  a  partizan  for  the  Christian  religion.' 

It  is  not  in  the  statement  of  the  principle  of  Associa- 
tion, but  in  its  application,  that  the  chief  interest  of 
Hartley's  treatment  of  the  subject  lies.  So  far  as  the 
principle  itself  is  concerned,  his  view  of  it  practically  antici- 
pates the  view  of  present  psychology,  reducing  association 
to  the  single  principle  of  contiguity,  or  the  tendency  of 
ideas  which  have  occurred  together,  or  in  immediate  suc- 
cession, to  recur  together  or  to  recall  one  another  It  is  in 
the  application  of  this  principle  to  the  entire  mental  life, 
and  especially  to  the  feelings  and  to  the  *  moral  sense,'  that 
his  originality  consists.  In  the  use  of  it  as  explaining  the 
genesis  of  conscience,  moreover,  he  recognises  two  truths 
of  the  greatest  significance  :  first,  that  the  product  of  the 
association  of  old  ideas  may  be  an  idea  quite  new,  in  the 
sense  of  being  different  from  the  mere  sum  of  its  com- 
ponent factors ;  secondly,  that '  that  which  is  prior  in  the 
order  of  nature  is  always  less  perfect  and  principal  than 
that  which  is  posterior.'  His  aim,  accordingly,  is  to 
trace  the  gradual  evolution  of  the  higher  pleasures  out  of 
the  lower,  of  the  later  out  of  the  earlier — the  progress 
from  the  pleasures  of  sensation  and  self-interest  to  those 
of  *  perfect  self-annihilation  and  the  pure  love  of  God.* 

*  Leslie  Stephen,  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  65. 
-  In  the  Life  prefixed  to  the  '  Notes  and  Additions  *  by  Pistorius, 
which  forms  the  third  volume  of  the  Observations. 


THE   MORALISTS  211 

*  And  thus  we  may  perceive,  that  all  the  pleasures  and 
pains  of  sensation,  imagination,  ambition,  self-interest, 
sympathy,  and  theopathy,  as  far  as  they  are  consistent 
with  one  another,  with  the  frame  of  our  natures,  and 
with  the  course  of  the  world,  beget  in  us  a  moral  sense, 
and  lead  us  to  the  love  and  approbation  of  virtue,  and  to 
the  fear,  hatred,  and  abhorrence  of  vice.  This  moral 
sense,  therefore,  carries  its  own  authority  with  it,  inasmuch 
as  it  is  the  sum  total  of  all  the  rest,  and  the  ultimate  result 
from  them  ;  and  employs  the  force  and  authority  of  the 
whole  nature  of  man  against  any  particular  part  of  it, 
that  rebels  against  the  determinations  and  commands  of 
the  conscience  or  moral  judgment.  It  appears  also  that 
the  moral  sense  carries  us  perpetually  to  the  pure  love  of 
God,  as  our  highest  and  ultimate  perfection,  our  end, 
centre,  and  only  resting-place,  to  which  we  can  never 
attain.'  ^  Yet  he  holds  that  *  the  love  of  God  affords  a 
pleasure  which  is  superior  in  kind  and  degree  to  all  the 
rest,  of  which  our  natures  are  capable,'  2  and  that  this 
follows  from  'the  frame  of  our  nature,  and  particula-ly 
its  subjection  to  the  power  of  association  '  or  the  tendency 

*  to  connect  God  with  each  [pleasure]  as  its  sole  cause.'  ^ 

In  the  ethical  psychology  of  Hartley,  as  well  as  in  that 
of  Hutcheson  and  of  Hume,  sympathy  occupied  a  place  of 
much  importance,  but  the  point  of  view  was  still  essen- 
tially individualistic.  It  was  left  to  Adam  Smith  to  at- 
tempt for  the  first  time  the  explanation  of  the  individual 
conscience  from  the  social  point  of  view,  and  to  make 
sympathy  the  central  principle  of  ethical  psychology. 
This  account  of  the  place  of  sympathy  in  the  moral  con- 
sciousness is  offered  as  a  substitute  at  once  for  the  view  of 
Hutcheson,  that  the  moral  sense  is  an  original  and  simple 
faculty,  and  for  the  view  of  Hume,  that  utility,  as  such,  is 
morally  approved.  While  admitting  the  general  coinci- 
dence of  propriety  with  utility.  Smith   distinguishes  the 

*  sense  of  propriety '  from  '  the  perception  of  utility,'  but 

^  Observations,  i.  497.  ^  Ibid,,  ii.  311.  *  Ibid.,  ii.  313. 


212         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

insists,  at  the  same  time,  that  the  sense  of  propriety  is 
always,  in  its  origin,  and  potentially  if  not  actually,  a 
sympathetic  sense.  It  is  in  its  emphasis  on  the  social 
aspect  of  conscience,  and  in  its  careful  analysis  of  the 
ethical  function  of  sympathy,  that  the  originality  of  the 
Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments  consists. 

To  approve  or  disapprove  of  the  affections  of  others, 
that  is,  to  judge  of  their  propriety  or  impropriety,  is  to 
sympathise  or  not  to  sympathise  with  these  affections. 
The  effort  of  the  spectator  to  sympathise  with  the  senti- 
ments of  the  person  principally  concerned  is  the  source  of 
'  the  amiable  virtues '  or  *  virtues  of  humanity ' ;  the  effort 
of  the  person  principally  concerned  to  *  bring  down  his 
emotions  to  what  the  spectator  can  go  along  with,'  is  the 
source  of '  the  great,  the  awful  and  respectable,  the  virtues 
of  self-denial,  of  self-government.'  '  Hence  it  is  that  to 
feel  much  for  others  and  little  for  ourselves,  that  to  restrain 
our  selfish,  and  to  indulge  our  benevolent  affections,  con- 
stitutes the  perfection  of  human  nature.'  ^  While  the 
sense  of  propriety  is  the  result  of  a  simple  and  direct 
sympathy  with  the  affections;  or  motives  of  others,  the 
sense  of  merit  and  demerit  is  the  result  of  a  compound 
sympathy,  direct  and  indirect :  in  the  one  case,  a  direct 
sympathy  with  the  sentiments  of  the  agent  and  an  in- 
direct sympathy  with  the  gratitude  of  those  affected  by 
his  action  ;  in  the  other,  a  direct  antipathy  to  the  senti- 
ments of  the  agent  and  an  indirect  sympathy  with  the 
resentment  of  those  who  suffer  from  his  action. 

As  we  judge  of  the  propriety  and  merit  of  the  actions 
of  others  by  putting  ourselves  in  their  place  and  looking 
at  their  motives  and  actions  with  their  own  eyes  or  from 
their  own  point  of  view,  by  sympathetically  identifying 
ourselves  with  the  agent  and  with  those  affected  by  his 
actions,  so  we  judge  the  propriety  and  merit  of  our  own 
actions,  and  of  the  affections  of  which  they  are  the 
expression,  by  looking  at  them  with  the  eyes  of  others,  by 
seeing  them  with  the  eyes  of  the  spectator,  and  sharing 

*  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  pp.  43,  44. 


THE   MORALISTS  213 

his  sentiments  concerning  them.  To  correct  the  par- 
tiality of  our  own  judgment  it  is  necessary,  however,  that 
we  look  at  our  own  actions  with  the  eyes  not  of  the 
actual  spectator,  who  is  always  more  or  less  partial  and 
more  or  less  ill-informed,  but  with  the  eyes  of  the  fully- 
informed  and  completely  impartial  spectator.  It  is  only 
by  thus  distinguishing  between  the  actual  and  the  ideal 
spectator,  or  '  the  outward  man '  and  '  the  man  within  the 
breast,'  that  we  can  distinguish  between  mere  praise  and 
praiseworthiness.  When  we  have  realised  this  distinction, 
*  we  are  pleased  to  think  that  we  have  rendered  ourselves 
the  natural  objects  of  approbation,  though  no  approbation 
should  ever  actually  be  bestowed  upon  us ;  and  we  are 
mortified  to  reflect  that  we  have  justly  incurred  the  blame 
of  those  we  live  with,  though  that  sentiment  should 
never  actually  be  exerted  against  us.'  ^  The  judgments  of 
actual  public  opinion  require  to  be  thus  corrected  by 
reference  to  the  judgment  of  the  ideal  public  or  the  ideal 
spectator.  For  though  society  is  the  mirror  in  which  we 
first  discover  the  propriety  and  merit,  or  impropriety  and 
demerit  of  our  own  actions,  *  unfortunately  this  moral 
looking-glass  is  not  always  a  very  good  one.'  In  general, 
Smith  seems  to  hold,  conformity  to  duty  will  mean 
conformity  to  the  '  general  rules '  which  result  from  the 
perception  of  the  particular  proprieties,  in  so  far  as  such 
general  rules  are  sufficiently  definite  for  guidance.  But  it 
is  only  the  rules  of  justice  that  are  really  adequate.  'The 
rules  of  justice  may  be  compared  to  the  rules  of  grammar  ; 
the  rules  of  the  other  virtues,  to  the  rules  which  critics 
lay  down  for  the  attainment  of  what  is  sublime  and 
elegant  in  composition.  The  one  are  precise,  accurate, 
and  indispensable.  The  other  are  loose,  vague,  and  in- 
determinate, and  present  us  rather  with  a  general  idea  of 
the  perfection  we  ought  to  aim  at,  than  afford  us  any 
certain  and  infallible  directions  for  acquiring  it.'^ 

This  theory  is  primarily  and   in  the  main   a  psycho- 
logical   theory    of  the  moral   sentiments,   rather   than    a 

^  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  p.  248.  *  Ibid.,  p.  31a 


214         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

solution  of  the  proper  problem  of  ethics,  that  of  the 
criterion  of  moral  value  or  of  the  basis  of  moral  dis- 
tinctions. It  is  the  culmination  of  the  psychological 
tendency  which  is  characteristic  of  the  'moral  sense' 
school  of  moralists ;  and  the  author's  own  consciousness 
of  this  limitation  of  the  inquiry  comes  out  in  various 
ways.  For  example,  as  regards  utility,  the  question 
which  he  discusses  is  not  the  relation  of  utility  to  pro- 
priety, but  whether  we  are  conscious  of  the  utility  or  of 
the  propriety  ;  not  whether  the  true  aim  of  punishment  is 
the  preservation  of  society,  but  whether  this,  or  resent- 
ment, is  the  actual  motive  of  punishment.  He  is  not 
attempting  to  account  for,  or  to  explain,  the  moral  element 
in  our  moral  sentiments  by  reducing  it  to  sympathy. 
Hence  the  irrelevancy  of  the  objection  of  Thomas 
Brown,  repeated  by  others,  that  '  the  feelings  with  which 
we  sympathise  are  themselves  moral  feelings  or  senti- 
ments ;  or  if  they  arc  not  moral  feelings,  the  reflection  of 
them  from  a  thousand  breasts  cannot  alter  their  nature ' ;  ^ 
and  that  '  in  either  case  it  is  equally  evident,  that  sympathy 
cannot  be  the  source  of  any  additional  knowledge,'^  since 
the  echo  of  our  own  feelings  in  those  of  others  can 
only  repeat  the  original  feeling, — the  '  moral  mirror '  can 
only  reflect  the  original  moral  judgment  of  the  individual. 
Smith  himself  does  not  hesitate  to  speak  of  '  natural  pro- 
priety,' of  *  our  moral  faculties,  our  natural  sense  of  merit 
and  propriety.'  ^  What  he  is  concerned  to  show  is  simply 
the  part  which  sympathy  plays  in  the  moral  consciousness 
of  the  individual,  the  essentially  social  nature  of  the 
individual  conscience  ;  that  without  society  we  could  not 
attain  moral  insight,  not  that  moral  insight  is  possible 
without  moral  faculties,  or  even  a  *  moral  sense.' 

The  only  direct  ethical  significance  of  the  theory  is, 
therefore,  the  essentially  social  nature  of  morality,  the 
inference  that  'man,  who  can  subsist  only  in  society, 
was  fitted  by  nature  to  that  situation  for  which  he  was 
made,'*  that  in  sympathy  is  found  the  real  security  for 

*  Philosophy  of  the  Human  Mind,  lect.  80.  *  Ibid.,  lect.  81. 

*  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments ^  p.  266.  *  Ibid.,  p.  188. 


THE   MORALISTS  215 

the  stability  of  *  the  great,  the  immense  fabric  of  human 
society,  that  fabric  which  to  raise  and  to  support  seems 
in  this  world,  if  I  may  say  so,  to  have  been  the  pecu- 
liar and  darling  care  of  nature.'  ^  In  the  Theory  of 
Moral  Sentiments^  as  in  the  Wealth  of  Nations^  he  recog- 
nises another  bond,  of  great  strength  and  value,  in  the 
economic  interests  of  the  individual.  *  Tho'  among  the 
different  members  of  the  society  there  should  be  no 
mutual  love  and  affection,  the  society,  tho'  less  happy 
and  agreeable,  will  not  necessarily  be  dissolved.  Society 
may  subsist  among  different  men,  as  among  different 
merchants,  from  a  sense  of  its  utility,  without  any  mutual 
love  or  affection  ;  and  tho'  no  man  in  it  should  owe 
any  obligation,  or  be  bound  in  gratitude  to  any  other, 
it  may  still  be  upheld  by  a  mercenary  exchange  of  good 
offices  according  to  an  agreed  valuation.' ^  This  pruden- 
tial motive,  however,  is  here  assigned  its  true  ethical 
place,  in  subordination  to  the  sympathetic  appreciation 
of  the  social  value  of  our  conduct.  The  ethical  function 
of  sympathy  is  to  substitute  for  the  partiality  of  the 
agent's  self-love  the  impartiality  of  the  spectator,  that 
is,  of  society,  actual  or  ideal.  The  moral  validity  of  our 
motives  depends,  as  Kant  would  say,  upon  the  possibility 
of  universalising  them — upon  their  approval,  not  by  the 
agent,  but  by  the  impartial  spectator. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied,  however,  that  Smith  at 
times  forgets  the  limitations  of  his  inquiry,  as  above 
described,  and  indulges  in  general  ethical  observations 
which  have  no  real  relation  to  it.  Sidgwick  has  justly 
noted  the  '  inferiority '  of  his  work  '  when  he  passes  from 
psychological  analysis  to  ethical  construction.'  ^  This 
is  seen,  for  example,  in  his  hasty  identification  of  the 
*  general  rules '  of  conduct  with  the  '  laws  of  God,'  and 
in  his  easy-going  theological  optimism.  '  It  is  impossible,' 
says  Leslie  Stephen,  *  to  resist  the  impression,  whilst  we 
read  his  fluent  rhetoric,  and  observe  his  easy  acceptance 
of  theological    principles   already  exposed  by  his   master 

^   Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  p.  190.  ^  /did.,  p.  189. 

'  History  of  Ethics,  p.  223. 


21 6         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Hume,  that  we  are  not  listening  to  a  thinker  really 
grappling  with  a  difficult  problem,  so  much  as  to  an 
ambitious  professor  who  has  found  an  excellent  oppor- 
tunity for  displaying  his  command  of  language,  and 
making  brilliant  lectures.  The  whole  tone  savours  of 
that  complacent  optimism  of  the  time  which  retained 
theological  phrases  to  round  a  paragraph,  and  to  save 
the  trouble  of  genuine  thought.'  ^  But  it  is  necessary 
to  remember  that  these  discussions  are  really  subsidiary 
to  the  main  argument ;  and  it  shows  a  singular  lack  of 
discernment  to  say  that  *  Smith's  main  proposition  was 
hardly  original,  though  he  has  worked  it  out  in  detail,  and 
it  is  rather  calculated  to  lead  us  dexterously  round  difficult 
questions  than  to  supply  us  with  a  genuine  answer.'^ 

Smith's  '  command  of  language '  must  strike  every 
reader  of  this  work,  as  well  as  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations. 
His  style,  though  perhaps  a  trifle  too  fluent,  is  very 
nearly  up  to  the  highest  level  of  English  philosophy, 
and  it  has  been  justly  remarked  that  *  the  charm  of  the 
Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments  lies  not  so  much  in  its 
principal  thesis,  as  in  its  incidental  discussions  and  illus- 
trations. In  these  the  absent-minded  scholar  shows  a 
wide  and  subtle  knowledge  of  human  nature,  and  never 
was  a  moralist  more  free  from  platitudes.' ^  One  of 
these  illustrations  may  be  quoted  to  show  the  quality 
of  Smith's  style  at  its  best,  the  passage  in  which  he 
explains  how  it  is  that  '  youth,  the  season  of  gaiety, 
so  easily  engages  our  affections.'  *  That  propensity  to 
joy  which  seems  even  to  animate  the  bloom,  and  to 
sparkle  from  the  eyes  of  youth  and  beauty,  tho'  in 
a  person  of  the  same  sex,  exalts  even  the  aged  to  a 
more  joyous  mood  than  ordinary.  They  forget,  for  a 
time,  their  infirmities,  and  abandon  themselves  to  those 
agreeable  ideas  and  emotions  to  which  they  have  long 
been  strangers,  but  which,  when  the  presence  of  so 
much  happiness  recalls  them  to  their  breast,  take  their 
place  there,  like  old  acquaintance,  from  whom  they  are 

^  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  77.  *  Loc.  cit. 

•  H.  Laurie,  Scottish  Philosophy,  p.  122. 


THE   MORALISTS  217 

sorry  to  have  ever  been  parted,  and  whom  they  embrace 
more  heartily  upon  account  of  this  long  separation,''  ^ 

3.   The  Early  Utilitarians :  Tucker  and  Paley 

The  ethical  inadequacy  of  the  psychological  or  '  moral 
sense '  theory,  even  when  developed  by  the  aid  of  the 
principles  of  Association  and  Sympathy,  invited  a  more 
deliberate  and  explicit  effort  to  solve  the  problem  of  the 
criterion  of  moral  distinctions,  such  as  we  find  in  the 
early  Utilitarians,  Tucker  and  Paley.  These  moralists 
attach  themselves,  not,  as  might  have  been  expected,  to 
Hume  and  his  doctrine  of  natural  altruism,  but  to  Gay, 
whose  doctrine — that  the  general  happiness  is  the  criterion, 
while  one's  own  happiness  is  the  motive,  of  virtuous 
action,  and  that  the  obligation  to  right  conduct  is  to  be 
found  in  the  sanctions  of  reward  and  punishment,  or  in 
its  consequences  to  the  individual  himself — they  set  them- 
selves to  elaborate.  So  far  as  the  merit  of  originality  can 
be  claimed  for  this  development  of  the  ideas  so  briefly 
sketched  by  Gay,  it  is  to  Tucker,  not  to  Paley,  that  such 
merit  belongs.  In  his  Principles  of  Moral  and  Political 
Philosophy  Paley  merely  reduces  to  more  succinct  and 
systematic  form  the  views  developed  at  wearisome  length 
and  without  due  regard  to  system  by  Tucker,  to  whom 
he  frankly  acknowledges  his  indebtedness.  *  I  have  found 
in  this  writer,'  he  says,  *  more  original  thinking  and 
observation  upon  the  several  subjects  that  he  has  taken  in 
hand,  than  in  any  other,  not  to  say,  in  all  others  put 
together.  .  .  .  But  his  thoughts  are  diffused  through  a 
Tong,  various,  and  irregular  work.  I  shall  account  it  no 
mean  praise,  if  I  have  been  sometimes  able  to  dispose  into 
method,  to  collect  into  heads  and  articles,  or  to  exhibit  in 
more  compact  and  tangible  masses,  what,  in  that  other- 
wise excellent  performance,  is  spread  over  too  much 
surface.' 2  Tucker  himself  makes  no  reference  to  his 
obligations  either  to  Gay  or  to  Hartley,  but  is  pro- 
fuse in  his  expressions  of  allegiance  and  indebtedness  to 

^  Theory  of  Moral  Sentiments,  p.  89.  *  Principles,  Preface. 


21 8         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Locke,  whose  '  experimental  method '  he  professes  to 
apply  to  moral  questions.  *  Whatever  I  may  be  able 
to  do,  I  stand  indebted  to  Mr.  Locke  for,  having  learned 
from  him  which  way  to  direct  my  observation,  and  how 
to  make  use  of  what  I  observe.'  ^  He  sets  himself  to 
show  that  *  we  derive  our  inclinations  and  moral  senses 
through  the  same  channel  as  our  knowledge,  without 
having  them  interwoven  originally  into  our  constitution,'  ^ 
and  in  the  doctrine  of  the  *  moral  sense '  he  sees  the 
ethical  version  of  the  doctrine  of  '  innate  ideas '  which 
Locke  had  so  successfully  exploded  in  its  intellectual 
applications.  Like  Hartley,  he  seeks  to  account  for  the 
*  moral  sense '  by  the  principle  of  Association,  which  he 
calls  *  Translation.' 

Tucker  is  equally  convinced  that  the  '  ultimate  good ' 
is  the  general  happiness,  and  that  the  only  motive  which 
can  ultimately  actuate  the  individual  is  regard  to  his  own 
happiness.  *The  fundamental  article  I  have  aimed  at 
establishing  is  that  of  universal  charity,  unreserved  bene- 
volence or  public  spirit,  not  confined  to  our  own  country 
alone,  but  extended  to  every  member  of  the  universe, 
whereof  we  all  are  citizens.'  ^  '  The  grand  funda- 
mental rule  of  conduct,'  he  holds,  is  that  of  '  labouring 
constantly  to  increase  the  common  stock  [of  good  or 
happiness]  by  any  beneficial  service  or  prevention  of 
damage  among  our  fellow-creatures  wherever  we  can, 
preferring  always  the  greater  discoverable  good  and  good 
of  the  greater  number,  before  the  less.'*  On  the  other 
hand  he  tells  us,  *I  have  examined  human  nature  and 
found  that  Satisfaction,  every  man's  own  satisfaction,  is 
the  spring  that  actuates  all  his  motions.'^  To  prove 
the  obligatoriness  of  virtuous  or  altruistic  conduct,  it  is 
necessary,  therefore,  to  show  the  complete  coincidence  of 
such  conduct  with  that  dictated  by  true  or  enlightened 
self-interest. 

As  to  the  general  coincidence  of  prudential  and  virtuous 
or  benevolent  conduct,  Tucker  has  no  doubts ;  and  the 

1  Light  of  Nature  Pursued,  Introd.  *  Ibid.,  i.  151  (3rd  ed.). 

'  Ibid. ,  ii.  677.  *  Ibid.,  ii.  670.      '  Ibid.,  i.  614. 


THE   MORALISTS  219 

solution  of  the  psychological  difficulty  of  reconciling 
disinterested  or  genuine  benevolence  with  self-interest  or 
that  regard  for  our  own  satisfaction,  or  pleasure  on  the 
whole,  which  he  takes  to  be  the  dominating  motive  of 
all   human  action,   is  found   by  him  in  the  principle  of 

*  Translation '  or  Association.  Through  it  he  is  able 
to  explain  how  the  means  acquire  for  us  the  importance 
of  the  end,  how  virtue  thus  becomes  an  end  in  itself 
and    '  general    rules '  of  conduct   take  the   place  of  the 

*  ultimate  good,'  which  is  for  the  individual  always  his 
own  happiness.  Yet  the  coincidence  remains  incom- 
plete :  the  highest  acts  of  virtue,  where  the  self-sacrifice 
seems  absolute,  have  not  been  reduced  to  terms  of 
prudence.  *We  have  found  no  reason  to  imagine 
a  wise  man  would  ever  die  for  his  country  or  suffer 
martyrdom  in  the  cause  of  virtue,  how  strong  propensity 
soever  he  might  feel  in  himself  to  maintain  her  interests. 
For  he  would  never  act  upon  impulse  nor  do  anything 
without  knowing  why  :  he  would  cultivate  a  disposition 
to  justice,  benevolence,  and  public  spirit,  because  he 
would  see  it  must  lead  him  into  actions  most  conducive 
to  his  happiness,  and  would  place  such  confidence  in 
his  rules  as  to  presume  they  carried  that  tendency  in 
particular  instances  wherein  it  did  not  immediately  appear. 
But  it  is  one  thing  not  to  see  directly  that  measures 
have  such  a  tendency,  and  another  to  discern  clearly 
that  they  have  a  contrary  ;  and  when  they  take  away 
all  capacity  of  further  enjoyment,  this  is  so  manifest 
a  proof  of  their  inexpedience  as  no  presumption  whatever 
can  withstand.  Therefore  he  will  never  let  his  love 
of  virtue  grow  to  such  an  extravagant  fondness  as  to 
overthrow  the  very  purposes  for  which  he  entertained 
it.'i 

Tucker  thus  finds  himself  forced,  for  the  complete 
solution  of  the  ethical  problem,  beyond  the  field  of  ethics 
into  that  of  metaphysics  or  theology.  So  far,  he  has 
proceeded  *  solely  upon  the  view  of  human  nature,  with- 

^  Light  of  Nature  Furiued,  i.  272. 


2  20         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

out  any  consideration  of  Religion  or  another  world,* 
and  in  the  very  incompleteness  of  the  solution  reached 
from  the  former  point  of  view  he  finds  the  proof  of  the 
necessity  of  the  latter.  From  the  benevolence  and  equity 
of  God  it  follows  that  'the  accounts  of  all  are  to  be 
set  even,'  or  that  the  shares  of  all  in  that  happiness 
which  is  the  ultimate  good  shall  be  made  equal  in 
the  long  run.  The  loss  or  sacrifice  of  happiness  which 
virtue  seems  to  call  for  on  the  part  of  the  individual 
can  therefore  be  only  apparent  or  temporary,  as  the 
gain  of  wrong-doing  also  is.  In  the  *  Bank  of  the  uni- 
verse,' whose  transactions  are  much  more  exact  and 
secure  than  those  of  the  Bank  of  England,  '  all  the  good 
a  man  does,  stands  placed  to  his  account,  to  be  repaid 
him  in  full  value  when  it  will  be  most  useful  to  him  : 
so  that  whoever  works  for  another,  works  for  himself; 
and  by  working  for  numbers,  earns  more  than  he  could 
possibly  do  by  working  for  himself  alone  .  .  .  like  a 
thrifty  merchant,  who  scruples  not  to  advance  consider- 
able sums,  and  even  to  exhaust  his  coffers,  for  gaining 
a  large  profit  to  the  common  stock  in  partnership.'  ^ 
This  idea  of  a  partnership  of  mankind  in  a  common 
stock  of  happiness,  by  any  addition  to  which  gain  must 
accrue,  in  the  future  if  not  in  the  present  life,  to 
the  individual  who  makes  it,  is  Tucker's  grand  solution 
of  the  apparent  contradiction  between  virtue  and  self- 
interest.  The  conviction  that,  as  Butler  puts  it,  a  man 
will  *  find  his  account '  in  virtue,  though  not  the  conscious 
motive  of  all  virtuous  actions,  yet  seems  to  Tucker  the 
only  possible  justification  of  virtue  to  the  reflective  mind. 

*lt  is  exclusively  as  a  psychologist  and  as  a  moralist,' 
says  Leslie  Stephen,  *that  Tucker  has  any  great  specula- 
tive merit' ;^  and,  like  the  other  moralists  of  his 
age,  with  the  exception  of  Butler  and  Hume,  it  is  in 
psychology  rather  than  in  ethics  that  he  excels.  To  use 
his  own  figure,  he  is  an  adept  in  the  use  of  *the  micro- 
scope '  of  psychological  analysis,  but  only  a  tyro  in  that 

^  Light  of  Nature  Pursued,  i.  666. 

*  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  112. 


THE   MORALISTS  221 

of  *  the  telescope '  of  metaphysical  and  theological  specu- 
lation. In  the  latter  sphere  we  feel,  with  Stephen,  that 
he  is  'a  solitary  and  half-trained  thinker.' 1  His  appeal 
is  from  masters  of  speculation  like  Berkeley  to  'the 
first  man  you  meet  in  the  street ' ;  he  is  too  solici- 
tous to  prove  the  orthodoxy  of  his  views,  too  'desirous,' 
in  his  own  words,  '  of  keeping  upon  good  terms  with 
everybody.'  ^  Yet  his  sincerity  is  not  to  be  denied ; 
the  reader  cannot  but  assent  to  his  claim  that  his  en- 
quiry has  been  a  real  one  to  himself.  '  My  thoughts,' 
he  tells  us,  '  have  taken  a  turn  from  my  earliest  youth 
towards  searching  into  the  foundations  and  measures  of 
right  and  wrong ;  my  love  for  retirement  has  furnished 
me  with  continual  leisure,  and  the  exercise  of  my  reason 
has  been  my  daily  employment.'  ^  Throughout  the 
work  we  are  conscious  of  the  practical  interest  which 
inspires  the  entire  undertaking,  and  of  the  transparent 
simplicity  of  the  author's  nature. 

Tucker's  qualities  as  a  writer  are  remarkable.  His 
talent  for  illustration  is,  as  Paley  says,  unrivalled  ;  '  his 
illustrations,  quaint  as  they  may  be,  have  frequently  the 
merit  of  an  almost  incomparable  felicity.'*  He  tells 
us  that  he  had  'a  desire  of  enlivening  abstruse  matters, 
and  rendering  them  visible  by  familiar  images,'  and  in 
the  number,  the  appositeness,  and  the  quaintness  of 
these  '  familiar  images  '  he  reminds  us  more  of  the  ancient 
Greek  philosophers  than  of  his  own  compatriots.  As 
in  the  case  of  Socrates  and  Plato,  too,  his  humour  is 
irrepressible  ;  he  is  '  an  example  of  that  rarest  of  all 
intellectual  compounds,  the  metaphysical  humourist.'^ 
He  is  always  master  of  an  easy  and  graceful,  if  un- 
ambitious style.  Yet  his  faults  as  a  writer  are  not  less 
obvious  than  his  virtues,  the  faults  of  lack  of  system, 
of  almost  unparalleled  diflFuseness  and   irrelevancy.     His 

I  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  120. 

^  Light  of  Nature  Pursued,  ii.  681. 

'  Life,  prefixed  to  Light  of  Nature  Pursued. 

*  Stephen,  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  no, 

*  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  ii.  no. 


222  ENGLISH    PHILOSOPHERS 

book  is,  as  he  himself  acknowledges,  more  like  *a  tissue 
of  separate  essays '  than  an  organic  whole  :  '  in  this  my 
investigation  of  that  wilderness,  the  human  mind  ...  I 
have  no  preconcerted  plan  .  .  .  and  though  not  without 
some  general  idea  of  the  end  to  which  my  inquiries 
will  lead  me,  yet  have  I  not  a  full  prospect  of  the  track 
they  will  take.'  He  is  not  really  writing  for  the  reader 
so  much  as  for  himself;  'I  am  not  to  be  considered  as 
a  professor  instructing  others  in  the  science  he  is  com- 
pletely master  of,  but  as  a  learner  seeking  after  an 
improvement  of  my  own  knowledge.'^  He  will  leave 
nothing  unsaid ;  as  Stephen  remarks,  *  he  utterly  ignores 
the  principle  that  the  secret  of  being  tedious  is  to  say 
everything.' 2  His  lack  of  instinct  for  system  leads  him 
into  endless  irrelevancies,  and  although  these  irrelevancies 
are  frequently  delightful,  in  their  cumulative  effect  they 
add  greatly  to  the  weariness  of  the  already  much-tried 
reader.  It  was  in  these  defects  of  Tucker's  exposition, 
otherwise  so  admirable,  that  Paley  saw  his  opportunity. 

Paley's  reputation  in  the  fields  of  natural  theology 
and  Christian  apologetics  is  at  least  equal  to  his  impor- 
tance as  a  moralist,  and  he  himself  regarded  his  works  in 
these  different  fields  as  constituting  a  system,  consisting  of 
*the  evidences  of  Natural  Religion,  the  evidences  of 
Revealed  Religion,  and  an  account  of  the  duties  that 
result  from  both.'  ^  His  experience  as  a  Cambridge  tutor 
doubtless  stimulated  and  educated  his  natural  gifts  as  a 
clear  and  convincing  writer  on  such  subjects  ;  he  always 
writes  as  *a  professor  instructing  others,'  and  his  books 
were  at  once  adopted  as  text-books  in  the  universities  and 
long  held  their  place  among  the  recognised  fountains  of 
knowledge  in  these  subjects.  Of  their  style  it  is  hardly 
an  exaggeration  to  say,  with  Mackintosh,  that  if  inevitably 
didactic  and  without  any  special  grace,  it  is  'as  near 
perfection  in  its  kind  as  any  in  our  language.' 

^  Light  of  Nature  Pursued,  i.  143-4. 

*  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  ii.  ill. 

*  Natural  Theology,  Dedication. 


THE   MORALISTS  223 

Alike  in  his  natural  theology  and  in  his  ethics 
Paley  represents,  as  Stephen  says,  '  the  commonplace 
English  mind,'  ^  and,  it  may  be  added,  the  commonplace 
eighteenth-century  mind.  His  conception  of  the  relation 
of  God  to  the  world  is  that  which  is  common  to  the 
orthodox  writers  and  their  deistic  opponents,  that  of  an 
external  and  mechanical  '  First  Cause ' ;  and  his  one 
contribution  to  the  argument  is  contained  in  his  famous 
argument  from  the  evidences  of  design  in  the  phenomena 
of  nature,  and  especially  of  the  animal  organism,  to  a 
divine  Designer  or  Contriver.  This  single  idea  is  illus- 
trated at  great  length,  especially  from  the  case  of  the 
human  organism  ;  and  the  opposing  alternatives  of  im- 
personal law  or  order  and  of  the  development  of  organs 
adapted  by  '  use  '  to  the  demands  of  the  external  conditions 
of  their  life  are  controverted  with  great  vigour  and  no 
little  acuteness  and  argumentative  skill.  The  impression 
left  upon  the  mind  of  the  reader  is  rather  that  of  a  clever  ind 
*  lawyer-like  '  mind,  as  Mackintosh  says,  than  that  of  any 
real  or  original  metaphysical  insight.  In  any  case  the  entire 
argument  rests,  like  that  of  Butler  in  the  Analogy^  upon 
presuppositions,  readily  accepted  in  the  writer's  own  age, 
which  the  progress  of  scientific  as  well  as  of  metaphysical 
thought  has  rendered  no  longer  tenable.  It  belongs  to 
the  pre-evolutionary  epoch. 

The  Principles  of  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy  is  a  work 
of  more  permanent  interest  and  value.  Though  its  main 
ideas  are  confessedly  derived  from  Tucker,  they  are 
developed  and  applied  by  Paley  to  *  the  situations  which 
arise  in  the  life  of  an  inhabitant  of  this  country  in  these 
times,'  2  and  to  the  solution  of  many  casuistical  difficulties 
with  a  skill,  sagacity,  and  knowledge  of  life  which  give 
them  a  new  value  and  significance.  Like  his  master, 
Tucker,  he  is  unusually  successful  in  avoiding  the  common- 
place and  in  resisting  the  temptation  to  write  for  edifica- 
tion. The  key-note  of  the  work  is  to  be  found  in  a 
sentence  of  Dr.  Johnson's,  quoted  in  the  Preface,  *  When 

^  English  Thought  in  the  Eighteenth  Century,  i.  409. 
*  Principles,  Preface. 


224         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

the  obligations  of  morality  are  taught,  let  the  sanctions  of 
Christianity  never  be  forgotten.'  Paley's  aim  is  to  develop 
the  system  of  ethics  from  the  Christian  standpoint ;  but 
he  holds  that  what  is  peculiar  to  Christianity  is  not  the 
substance  of  Christian  morality,  but  the  sanctions  by 
which  that  morality  is  enforced,  the  new  motive  which 
is  invoked.  The  principle  of  morality,  he  agrees  with 
Tucker,  is  Utility  :  Virtue  is '  the  doing  good  to  mankind.' 
Christian  virtue  is  '  the  doing  good  to  mankind,  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  will  of  God,  and  for  the  sake  of  everlasting 
happiness '  ^  The  motive  is,  as  with  Tucker,  self-interest, 
but  the  larger  self-interest  which  is  appealed  to  by  the 
Christian  idea  of  God  as,  in  His  benevolence,  willing 
the  happiness  of  His  creatures.  Virtue  thus  implies  obli- 
gation ;  and  *a  man  is  said  to  be  obliged  when  he  is 
urged  by  a  violent  motive  resulting  from  the  command  of 
another.'  *  There  is  no  obligation  except  from  the 
command  of  a  superior,  who  offers  a  sufficient  induce- 
ment for  our  obedience.  '  And  from  this  account  of 
obligation  it  follows,  that  we  can  be  obliged  to  nothing, 
but  what  we  ourselves  are  to  gain  or  lose  something  by  ; 
for  nothing  else  can  be  a  "  violent  motive  "  to  us.  As  we 
should  not  be  obliged  to  obey  the  laws,  or  the  magistrate, 
unless  rewards  or  punishments,  pleasure  or  pain,  somehow 
or  other,  depended  upon  our  obedience  ;  so  neither  should 
we,  without  the  same  reason,  be  obliged  to  do  what  is 
right,  to  practise  virtue,  or  to  obey  the  commands  of 
God.'^  In  proof  of  these  divine  sanctions  of  virtue 
and  vice  he  appeals  alike  to  Scripture  and,  as  in  the 
Natural  Theology^  to  the  evidences  of  benevolent  design 
in  the  works  of  God  as  revealed  in  nature.  Since  the 
design  of  God  is  the  general  happiness,  we  may  infer  the 
congruity  or  incongruity  of  our  actions  with  His  will,  their 
virtuous  or  vicious  character,  by  considering  their  conse- 
quences, in  pleasure  or  pain,  for  mankind  ;  and  it  is  to 
this  secondary  or  utilitarian  criterion,  rather  than  to  the 
ultimate  rule  of  the  will  of  God,  that  Paley  generally 

1  Principles,  bk.  i.  ch.  vji.  2  iind.,  bk.  ii.  ch.  ii, 

»  l/>c.  cit. 


THE   MORALISTS  225 

refers.  That  the  general  happiness  is  the  content  of  the 
divine  will,  makes  action  which  is  conducive  to  that  happi- 
ness, rather  than  to  our  own,  obligatory  upon  us,  ensuring 
as  it  does  the  ultimate  coincidence  of  virtue  and  self- 
interest.  The  only  difference  between  an  act  of  prudence 
and  an  act  of  duty  is  '  that,  in  the  one  case,  we  consider 
what  we  shall  gain  or  lose  in  the  present  world  ;  in  the 
other  case,  we  consider  also  what  we  shall  gain  or  lose  in 
the  world  to  come.'  ^ 

The  emphasis,  throughout  the  work,  is,  however,  rather 
upon  the  substance  than  upon  the  sanctions  of  virtue. 
Paley's  effort  is  to  develop  the  ethics  of  Utility,  to  trace 
in  detail  the  kind  of  conduct  which  is  prescribed  by  regard 
to  the  general  happiness  ;  and  the  ultimate  motive  of  self- 
interest  really  drops  out  of  sight.  Having  once  for  all 
proved  to  his  own  satisfaction  the  obligatoriness  of  virtue,^ 
he  devotes  himself  to  the  detailed  delineation  of  virtue. 
While  he  consistently  denies  any  qualitative  distinction 
between  pleasures,  his  interpretation  of  virtue  in  terms  of 
utility  is  saved  from  the  consequences  which,  in  less 
careful  hands,  might  have  seemed  to  follow  from  such  a 
view.  He  sharply  differentiates  the  true  from  the  false 
idea  of  happiness.  It  does  not  consist  in  the  pleasures  of 
the  senses,  but  in  *  the  exercise  of  the  social  affections,'  in 
*  the  exercise  of  our  faculties,  either  of  body  or  mind,  in 
the  pursuit  of  some  engaging  end,'  in  *  the  formation  of 
good  habits  and  in  health  of  body  and  of  mind.'  ^  He 
distinguishes  between  the  particular  and  the  general 
consequences  or  utility  of  the  action,  and  deduces  from 
this  distinction  the  necessity  of  'general  rules'  which 
must  be  obeyed  unquestioningly,  for  the  most  part, 
without  any  calculation  of  the  results  in  the  particular 
case.  It  is  by  reference  to  this  principle  that  he  solves 
the  various  questions  of  casuistry  which  arise  in  the  life 

^  Principles,  bk.  ii.  ch.  iii. 

*  '  This  solution  goes  to  the  bottom  of  the  subject,  as  no  farther  ques- 
tion can  reasonably  be  asked  :  therefore,  private  happiness  is  our  motive, 
and  the  will  of  God  our  rule.' — Ibid.,  bk.  ii.  ch.  iii. 

*  Ibid.,  bk.  i.  qh.  vi, 

P 


226         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

of  duty,  the  general  rule  not  being  different  in  its  origin 
from  the  rule  of  particular  utility,  but  representing  the 
larger  utility,  with  which  the  narrower  is  always  liable  to 
conflict.  Finally,  he  so  fully  recognises  the  utilitarian 
value  of  character,  or  of  formed  habits  of  virtuous  action, 
and  the  practical  necessity  of  allowing  this  all-important 
means  to  take  the  place  of  the  end,  as  to  approximate 
very  closely  to  the  acknowledgment  of  its  intrinsic  and 
ultimate  value.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  doctrine 
of  probation,  in  the  Natural  Theology^  which  is  practically 
identical  with  that  of  Butler,  in  the  Analogy.  Of  the 
purpose  or  design  *  for  which  the  state  in  which  we  are 
placed  is  fitted,  and  which  it  is  made  to  serve,'  he  says 
*  the  most  probable  supposition  '  is  *  that  it  is  a  state  of 
moral  probation,  and  that  many  things  in  it  suit  with 
this  hypothesis,  which  suit  no  other.  It  is  not  a  state 
of  unmixed  happiness,  or  of  happiness  simply  ;  it  is  not  a 
state  of  designed  misery,  or  of  misery  simply  j  it  is  not  a 
state  of  retribution  ;  it  is  not  a  state  of  punishment.  It 
suits  with  none  of  these  suppositions.  It  accords  much 
better  with  the  idea  of  its  being  a  condition  calculated 
for  the  production,  exercise,  and  improvement  of  moral 
qualities,  with  a  view  to  a  future  state,  in  which  these 
qualities,  after  being  so  produced,  exercised,  and  improved, 
may,  by  a  new  and  more  favouring  constitution  of  things, 
receive  their  reward,  or  become  their  own.'  *  Virtue  per- 
haps is  the  greatest  of  all  ends.'  ^ 

^  Nat.  Theol.,  ch.  xxvi. 


CHAPTER   IV 

THE   REVIVAL   OF  RATIONALISM: 
PRICE  AND   REID 

Though  Reid,  as  the  founder  of  the  Scottish  Philosophy 
of  Common  Sense,  as  well  as  in  virtue  of  the  larger  scale 
of  his  philosophical  work,  is  decidedly  the  more  important 
thinker,  yet  Price  has  an  importance  of  his  own,  as  the 
earlier  writer,  and  on  account  of  the  remarkable  way  in 
which,  in  the  ethical  field,  he  anticipates  some  of  the  lead- 
ing positions  of  Kant.  The  originality  of  the  Review  of 
the  Principal  Questions  in  Morals^  published  in  1757,  is 
considerably  diminished  by  the  extent  to  which  Price  is 
indebted  to  Cudworth  and  Clarke,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
to  Butler,  on  the  other.  The  latter  *■  incomparable 
writer '  is  the  special  object  of  Price's  admiration,  and  he 
accepts,  so  far  as  they  go,  Butler's  views  of  conscience,  self- 
love,  and  benevolence,  agreeing  with  him  especially  in  his 
antagonism  to  Hutcheson's  doctrines  of  the  *  moral  sense  ' 
and  of  benevolence  as  the  whole  of  virtue,  against  which 
his  own  work  is  one  sustained  polemic.  His  chief  aim  is  to 
show,  as  against  Hume's  development  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  *  moral  sense,'  the  absolute  and  immutable  nature 
of  moral  distinctions.  The  original  source  of  Hume's 
empiricism  and  scepticism,  in  the  intellectual  as  well  as 
in  the  ethical  sphere,  he  finds  in  Locke's  initial  error  of 
deriving  all  *  simple  ideas'  from  sensation  and  reflection. 
The  understanding,  he  holds,  gives  us  not  merely  know- 
ledge, but  also  new  '  simple  ideas.'  Locke's  denial  of  this 
is  the  result  of  his  confusion  of  understanding  with  imagi- 
nation. '  It  is  a  capital  error,  into  which  those  persons 
run  who  confound  the  understanding  with  the  imagination 

327 


22  8         ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

and  deny  reality  and  possibility  to  everything  the  latter 
cannot  conceive,  however  clear  and  certain  to  the  former. 
The  powers  of  the  imagination  are  very  narrow  ;  and  were 
the  understanding  confined  to  the  same  limits,  nothing 
could  be  known,  and  the  very  faculty  itself  would  be 
annihilated.  Nothing  is  plainer  than  that  one  of  these 
often  perceives  where  the  other  is  blind  ;  is  surrounded 
with  light  where  the  other  finds  all  darkness ;  and,  in 
numberless  instances,  knows  things  to  exist  of  which  the 
other  can  frame  no  idea.'  ^  While  sense  and  imagination 
have  to  do  only  with  particulars,  the  understanding  has  to 
do  with  universals.  Understanding,  as  a  source  of  self- 
evident  ideas,  must  also  be  distinguished  from  reasoning, 
or  the  investigation  of  relations  between  objects,  ideas  of 
which  we  already  possess.  If  any  one  denies  the  self- 
evidence  of  such  original  ideas  of  the  understanding,  we 
can  only  '  refer  him  to  common  sense.  If  he  cannot  find 
there  the  perception  I  have  mentioned,  he  is  not  farther 
to  be  argued  with,  for  the  subject  will  not  admit  of  argu- 
ment ;  there  being  nothing  clearer  than  the  point  itself 
disputed  to  be  brought  to  confirm  it.'  ^ 

Among  the  self-evident  ideas  apprehended  by  the 
understanding  are  those  of  right  and  wrong.  The  ultimate 
moral  distinctions  belong  to  the  nature  of  things,  the  im- 
mutable order  of  the  universe,  and  are  no  more  capable  of 
proof  than  ultimate  intellectual  relations,  *  There  are, 
undoubtedly,  some  actions  that  are  ultimately  approved,  and 
for  justifying  which  no  reason  can  be  assigned  ;  as  there 
are  some  ends,  which  are  ultimately  desired,  and  for 
choosing  which  no  reason  can  be  given.  \  /ere  not  this 
true,  there  would  be  an  infinite  progression  ^f  reasons  and 
ends,  and  therefore  nothing  could  be  at  .'  1  approved  or 
desired.' '  The  obligation  of  such  actio^  s  rests  upon 
their  intrinsic  nature ;  they  are  obligatory  upon  a 
rational  being,  apart  altogether  from  reward  or  punish- 
ment. A  rational  being,  as  such,  ought  to  act  not 
from  instinct,  passion,  or  appetite,  not  even  from  self-love 

1  Review,  ch.  i.  sect.  2.  '  Loc.  cit. 

»  Ibid.,  ch.  i.  sect.  3. 


THE   REVIVAL   OF   RATIONALISM     229 

or  benevolence,  but  from  purely  rational  considerations. 
It  is  only  '  our  deficiencies  and  weaknesses '  that  give 
occasion  to  actions  of  the  former  kind  ;  '  reason  alone,  did 
we  possess  it  in  a  higher  degree,  would  answer  all  the 
ends  of  them.'  For  example,  *  there  would  be  no  need 
of  the  parental  affection,  were  all  parents  sufficiently 
acquainted  with  the  reasons  for  taking  upon  them  the 
guidance  and  support  of  those  whom  nature  has  placed 
under  their  care,  and  were  they  virtuous  enough  to 
be  always  determined  by  those  reasons.'  ^  '  The  intel- 
lectual nature  is  its  own  law.  It  has,  within  itself,  a 
spring  and  guide  of  action  which  it  cannot  suppress  or 
reject.  Rectitude  is  itself  an  end,  an  ultimate  end,  an  end 
superior  to  all  other  ends,  governing,  directing,  and  limiting 
them,  and  whose  existence  and  influence  depend  on  nothing 
arbitrary.  It  presides  over  all.  Every  appetite  and 
faculty,  every  instinct  and  will,  and  all  nature  are  subjected 
to  it.  To  act  from  affection  to  it,  is  to  act  with  light, 
and  conviction,  and  knowledge.  But  acting  from  instinct 
is  so  far  acting  in  the  dark,  and  following  a  blind  guide. 
Instinct  drive'  and  precipitates  ;  but  reason  commands.''  ^ 

It  follows,  for  Price  as  for  Kant,  that  'an  agent 
cannot  be  justly  denominated  virtuous^  except  he  acts 
from  a  consciousness  of  rectitude,  and  with  a  regard  to 
it  as  his  rule  and  end ' ;  that  '  the  virtue  of  an  agent  is 
always  less  in  proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  natural 
temper  and  propensities  fall  in  with  his  actions,  in- 
stinctive principles  operate,  and  rational  reflexion  on 
what  is  right  to  be  done,  is  wanting.'^  Yet  he  also 
appeals,  in  f>e  spirit  of  his  age,  to  considerations  of 
self-interest.  Speaking  of  the  probability,  or  even  bare 
possibility,  of  an  eternal  reward  of  virtue,  he  expresses 
surprise  that  uren  'should  so  little  care  to  put  themselves 
in  the  way  to  win  this  Prize,  and  to  become  adventurers 
here,  where  even  to  fail  would  be  glorious ' ;  that  they 
should  forget  '  that  by  such  a  course  as  virtue  and  piety 
require,  we    can    in    general   lose  nothing,  but   may  gain 

^  Review,  ch.  iii.  *  Ibid.,  ch.  viii.  •  Loc  cit. 


230         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

infinitely ;  and  that,  on  the  contrary,  by  a  careless  ill- 
spent  life  we  can  get  nothing^  or  at  best  (happen  what 
will)  next  to  nothingy  but  may  lose  infinitely.'''^  Even 
in  the  present  life  virtue  is,  in  a  real  sense,  its  own 
reward  ;  genuine  virtue  and  happiness  are  inseparable, 
and  the  delight  which  a  man  takes  in  virtuous  action 
is  a  sure  criterion  of  the  reality  of  his  virtue.  *What 
our  hearts  are  most  set  upon  will  make  the  principal 
part  of  our  happiness.  .  .  .  Well  therefore  may  he 
suspect  his  character,  who  finds  that  virtuous  exercises, 
the  duties  of  piety,  and  the  various  offices  of  love  and 
goodness  to  which  he  may  be  called,  are  distasteful 
and  irksome  to  him.  Virtue  is  the  object  of  the  chief 
complacency  of  every  virtuous  man  ;  the  exercise  of  it 
is  his  chief  delight ;  and  the  consciousness  of  it  gives 
him  his  highest  joy.'  ^ 

Thomas  Reid  is  the  founder  of  the  Scottish  Philosophy 
of  Common  Sense.  His  appeal  to  '  Common  Sense '  con- 
stitutes a  new  departure  in  English  philosophy  :  it  is  his 
answer  to  Hume,  his  method  of  vindicating  the  rationality 
of  Belief  from  Hume's  sceptical  attack.  His  essential 
thesis  is  that  the  scepticism  of  Hume  is  the  reductio  ad 
ahsurdum  of  the  *  doctrine  of  ideas '  which  is  common  to 
Locke  and  Descartes.  While  accepting  the  experiential 
and  psychological  method  of  Locke,  he  dissents  from  this 
Cartesian  or  *  ideal  theory,'  which  limits  our  knowledge 
to  ideas  and  their  relations.  In  this  theory  he  finds  the 
initial  and  fatal  error  which  leads  to  the  scepticism  of 
Hume.  It  was  Hume  who  woke  Reid,  like  Kant,  from 
his  dogmatic  slumber,  who  first  compelled  him  to  question 
the  philosophical  tradition  in  which  he  had  grown  up. 
'  I  shall  always  avow  myself  your  disciple  in  metaphysics,* 
he  writes  to  the  great  sceptic ;  '  I  have  learned  more 
from  your  writings  in  this  kind  than  from  all  others  put 
together.  Your  system  appears  to  me  not  only  coherent 
in  all  its  parts,  but  likewise  justly  deduced  from  prin- 
ciples commonly  received  among  philosophers  ;  principles 

1  Review,  Conclusion.  *  Ibid.,  cb.  ix. 


THE   REVIVAL   OF   RATIONALISM     231 

which  I  never  thought  of  calling  in  question  until  the 
conclusions  you  drew  from  them  in  the  "Treatise  of 
Human  Nature  "  made  me  suspect  them.'  ^ 

The  inevitableness  of  the  sceptical  development  of  the 
ideal  theory  is  rapidly  sketched  by  Reid  in  the  following 
characteristic  passage.  *  Ideas  seem  to  have  something  in 
their  nature  unfriendly  to  other  existences.  They  were 
first  introduced  into  philosophy  in  the  humble  character 
of  images  or  representatives  of  things  ;  and  in  this  char- 
acter they  seemed  not  only  to  be  inoffensive,  but  to  serve 
admirably  well  for  explaining  the  operations  of  the  human 
understanding.  But,  since  men  began  to  reason  clearly 
and  distinctly  about  them,  they  have  by  degrees  supplanted 
their  constituents,  and  undermined  the  existence  of  every- 
thing but  themselves.  First,  they  discarded  all  secondary 
qualities  of  bodies  ;  and  it  was  found  out  by  their  means 
that  fire  is  not  hot,  nor  snow  cold,  nor  honey  sweet ;  and, 
in  a  word,  that  heat  and  cold,  sound,  colour,  taste,  and 
smell,  are  nothing  but  ideas  or  impressions.  Bishop 
Berkeley  advanced  them  a  step  higher,  and  found  out,  by 
just  reasoning  from  the  same  principles,  that  extension, 
solidity,  space,  figure  and  body,  are  ideas,  and  that  there  is 
nothing  in  nature  but  ideas  and  spirits.  But  the  triumph 
of  ideas  was  completed  by  the  "Treatise  on  Human 
Nature,"  which  discards  spirits  also,  and  leaves  ideas  and 
impressions  as  the  sole  existences  in  the  universe.  .  .  . 
These  ideas  are  as  free  and  independent  as  the  birds  of 
the  air,  or  as  Epicurus's  atoms  when  they  pursue  their 
journey  in  the  vast  inane.  .  .  .  They  make  the  whole 
furniture  of  the  universe ;  starting  into  existence,  or 
out  of  it,  without  any  cause  ;  combining  into  parcels, 
which  the  vulgar  call  minds ;  and  succeeding  one  another 
by  fixed  laws,  without  time,  place,  or  author  of  those 
laws.'  2 

The  initial  error  of  Locke  was,  according  to  Reid,  his 
postulating  '  simple  ideas '  or  *  simple  apprehension  '  as  the 
elementary  datum  or  material  of  knowledge.      Hume's 

^  Hill  Burton,  Life  of  Hume,  ii.  155.  *  Works,  i.  109. 


232  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

sceptical  disintegration  of  knowledge  into  unrelated  sensa- 
tions is  the  inevitable  result  of  such  a  start.  'Simple 
apprehension,  though  it  be  the  simplest,  is  not  the  first 
operation  of  the  understanding ;  and,  instead  of  saying 
that  the  more  complex  operations  of  the  mind  are  formed 
by  compounding  simple  apprehensions,  we  ought  rather 
to  say,  that  simple  apprehensions  are  got  by  analysing 
more  complex  operations.'^  The  elementary  feature  of 
knowledge  is  judgment  or  belief.  We  do  not  first  have 
the  several  ideas,  and  then  proceed  to  compare  and  relate 
them  ;  every  idea  '  suggests '  its  relation  at  once  to  a 
subject  and  to  an  object.  The  mere  isolated  sensation 
is  the  product  of  abstraction  ;  in  actual  perception  the 
sensation  always  'suggests,'  or  carries  with  it  the  belief 
in  a  corresponding  quality  as  belonging  to  the  object. 
In  the  case  of  the  secondary  qualities,  all  that  is  suggested 
is  some  quality,  quite  unlike  the  sensation  ;  in  the  case  of 
the  primary  qualities,  we  know  the  quality,  though  it  is 
still  unlike  the  sensation.^ 

These  original  and  fundamental  judgments  Reid  calls 
'judgments  of  nature 'or  'natural  suggestions,'  as  dis- 
tinguished from  judgments  and  suggestions  which  are  the 
result  of  experience,  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  reasoning,  on 
the  other  :  they  belong  to  '  our  constitution,'  and  are  the 
presupposition  of  all  other  knowledge.  The  attempt  to 
prove  them  is,  therefore,  foredoomed  to  failure.  They 
are  the  '  first  principles '  upon  which  all  reasoning  rests. 
Of  them  'we  can  give  no  other  account  but  that  they 
necessarily  result  from  the  constitution  of  our  faculties ' ;  ^ 
they  are  'not  grounded  upon  any  antecedent  reasoning, 
but  upon  the  constitution  of  the  mind  itself.'  *  They 
belong  to  the  '  Common  Sense  and  Reason  '  of  mankind. 
*  The  power  of  judging  in  self-evident  propositions  .  .  . 
is  purely  natural,  and  therefore  common  to  the  learned 
and  the  unlearned,  to  the  trained  and  the  untrained.  It 
requires  only  ripeness  of  understanding,  and  freedom  from 
prejudice,  but  nothing   else.'  ^      '  In    such   controversies, 

^  Works,  i.  376.  *  Works,  i.  313  ff.  »  Works,  i.  455. 

*  Works,  i.  452.  '  Works,  i.  434. 


THE   REVIVAL   OF   RATIONALISM     233 

every  man  is  a  competent  judge.  .  .  .  To  judge  of  first 
principles,  requires  no  more  than  a  sound  mind  free  from 
prejudice,  and  a  distinct  conception  of  the  question. 
The  learned  and  the  unlearned,  the  philosopher  and  the 
day-labourer,  are  upon  a  level,  and  w^ill  pass  the  same 
judgment,  when  they  are  not  misled  by  some  bias,  or 
taught  to  renounce  their  understanding  from  some  mis- 
taken religious  principle.  In  matters  beyond  the  reach 
of  common  understanding,  the  many  are  led  by  the  fevi^, 
and  willingly  yield  to  their  authority.  But,  in  matters  of 
common  sense,  the  few  must  yield  to  the  many,  when 
local  and  temporary  prejudices  are  removed.'  ^ 

Such  statements  as  these  have  led  to  the  criticism  of 
the  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense  as  an  appeal  from  the 
reasoned  conclusions  of  philosophy  to  the  vulgar  prejudices 
and  unthinking  beliefs  of  the  ordinary  man.  This 
criticism  was  first  made  by  Priestley,  in  his  Examination 
of  ReitTs  Inquiry^  Beanie's  Essay^  and  Oswald's  Appeal  to 
Common  Sense,  published  in  1774,  and  was  repeated  in  a 
well-known  passage  in  Kant's  Prolegomena.  Instead  of 
solving  Hume's  problem  in  the  sense  in  which  he  had 
stated  it,  the  Scottish  philosophers  have,  Kant  holds,  missed 
the  point  of  Hume's  scepticism.  *  The  always  unfavour- 
able fate  of  metaphysics  willed  that  he  should  be  understood 
by  no  one.  It  cannot  be  without  feeling  a  certain  regret  that 
one  sees  how  completely  his  opponents,  Reid,  Oswald, 
Beattie,  and,  lastly,  Priestley,missed  the  point  of  his  problem, 
in  taking  that  for  granted  which  was  precisely  what  he 
doubted,  and  on  the  other  hand  in  proving  with  warmth, 
and  in  most  cases  great  immodesty,  what  it  had  never 
entered  his  head  to  question.  ...  It  was  not  the  question 
whether  the  conception  of  Cause  was  correct  and  useful, 
and  in  view  of  the  whole  knowledge  of  Nature,  indis- 
pensable, for  upon  this  Hume  had  never  cast  a  doubt.  .  .  . 
The  question  was  as  to  the  origin  of  the  idea,  not  as  to 
its  practical  necessity  in  use.  .  .  .  The  opponents  of  this 
celebrated   man,  to  have   done  the  problem  full  justice, 

1  Works,  i.  438. 


234         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

must  have  penetrated  deeply  into  the  nature  of  the 
Reason,  in  so  far  as  it  is  occupied  solely  with  pure 
thought,  a  thing  which  was  inconvenient  for  them.  They 
invented  therefore  a  more  convenient  means,  by  which, 
without  any  insight,  they  might  defy  him,  namely,  the 
appeal  to  the  common  sense  of  mankind.  It  is  indeed  a 
great  natural  gift  to  possess,  straightforward  (or,  as  it  has 
been  called,  plain)  common  sense.  But  it  must  be  proved 
by  deeds,  by  the  thoughtfulness  and  rationality  of  what 
one  thinks  and  says,  and  not  by  appealing  to  it  as  an 
oracle,  when  one  has  nothing  wise  to  adduce  in  one's 
justification.  When  insight  and  science  are  at  a  low  ebb, 
then  and  not  before  to  appeal  to  common  sense  is  one  of 
the  subtle  inventions  of  modern  times,  by  which  the 
emptiest  talker  may  coolly  confront  the  profoundest 
thinker  and  hold  out  against  him.  But  so  long  as  there 
is  a  small  remnant  of  insight  left,  one  will  be  cautious 
of  clutching  at  this  straw.  And  seen  in  its  true  light,  the 
argument  is  nothing  better  than  an  appeal  to  the  verdict 
of  the  multitude  ;  a  clamour  before  which  the  philosopher 
blushes,  and  the  popular  witling  scornfully  triumphs. 
But  I  should  think  that  Hume  can  make  as  good  claim  to 
the  possession  of  common  sense  as  Beattie,  and  in  addition, 
to  something  the  latter  certainly  did  not  possess,  namely, 
a  critical  Reason,  to  hold  common  sense  within  bounds 
in  order  not  to  let  it  overreach  itself  in  speculations.  .  .  . 
Chisel  and  hammer  are  quite  sufficient  to  shape  a  piece 
of  deal,  but  for  copper-engraving  an  etching-needle  is 
necessary.'  ^ 

The  fact  that  Kant  couples  the  philosophy  of  Reid 
with  that  of  Oswald  and  Beattie,  and  includes  all  three 
in  a  common  condemnation  with  their  critic,  Priestley, 
suggests  that  his  knowledge  of  the  Scottish  Philosophy 
was  derived  from  Beattie's  work,  if  not  from  Priestley's 
criticism,  and  amounts  to  a  serious  injustice  to  the  founder 
of  the  school.  Neither  Beattie,  whom  Sidgwick  well  de- 
scribes as  *a  man  of  real,  but  chiefly  literary  ability,  a 

*  ProUgoinena,  IntrocL,  Belfort  Box's  trans.,  pp.  4-6. 


THE    REVIVAL   OF   RATIONALISM     235 

poet  by  choice  and  a  philosopher  from  a  sense  of  duty,* 
nor  Oswald,  whom  the  same  writer  calls  *a  theological 
pamphleteer,'  is  to  be  compared  with  Reid  in  philo- 
sophical power ;  and  neither  discriminates,  as  he  does, 
between  the  popular  and  the  philosophical  meaning  of 
the  term  Common  Sense.  '  There  are  ways  of  reasoning, 
with  regard  to  first  principles,'  he  says,  *  by  which  those 
that  are  truly  such  may  be  distinguished  from  vulgar 
errors  or  prejudices.'  ^  Such  principles  can  be  proved 
indirectly,  if  not  directly,  by  showing  the  absurd  and 
self-contradictory  consequences  to  which  their  denial 
leads.  Their  evidence  is  found  in  '  what  is  common  in 
the  structure  of  all  languages,'  which  represent  the 
common  and  natural  judgments  of  mankind.  His  appeal 
is  not  to  *  the  first  man  you  meet,'  but  to  the  ideal 
man  ;  the  common  basis  of  truth  can  be  reached,  he 
holds,  only  by  the  process  of  critical  reflection.  His  'first 
principles'  are  the  presuppositions  of  all  reasoning,  and 
the  insight  into  their  originality  and  ultimateness,  as  such, 
is  itself  the  result  of  persistent  philosophical  reflection. 
'  To  judge  of  first  principles,  requires  no  more  than  a 
sound  mind  free  from  prejudice,  and  a  distinct  conception 
of  the  question ' ;  but  it  implies  these  rare  qualifications. 
'It  requires  only  ripeness  of  understanding,  and  freedom 
from  prejudice,  but  nothing  else.'  And  when  we  follow' 
Reid's  argument  in  refutation  of  the  scepticism  of  Hume, 
as  it  has  been  sketched  above,  we  find  that  it  consists 
in  a  philosophical  demonstration  of  the  connexion  between 
Hume's  conclusions  and  the  premises,  common  to  his 
reasoning  and  that  of  Locke  and  Berkeley,  not  to  speak 
of  Descartes  and  still  earlier  philosophers,  the  sceptical 
result  being  taken  to  imply  the  unsatisfactory  character 
of  the  premises  from  which  it  is  the  logical  conclusion. 
In  short,  we  find  Reid,  like  Kant,  endeavouring  to  escape 
Hume's  conclusion  by  rejecting  Hume's  premises  which, 
in  the  eyes  of  both  philosophers,  seem  to  have  disproved 
themselves  by  the  unthinkableness  of  their  consequences. 

*  Works,  i.  441. 


236  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  there  is  another 
Reid  who  is  fitly  coupled  with  Beattie  and  Oswald,  as 
the  deeper  Reid  whose  method  we  have  described  is 
coupled  with  the  names  of  Adam  Ferguson  and  Dugald 
Stewart,  who  did  little  else  than  express  in  better  literary 
form  the  thoughts  of  their  more  original  predecessor. 
There  is  the  Reid  who  does  not  hesitate  to  make  play 
for  the  uninitiated  with  the  results  of  the  *  theory  of 
ideas ' ;  who  asserts  against  Hume  the  necessity  of  that 
practical  belief  of  which  Hume  himself  had  proclaimed 
the  inevitableness  ;  who  betrays  fatal  inability  to  under- 
stand the  significance  of  the  Berkeleyan  idealism,  or  to 
distinguish  the  speculative  from  the  practical  aspect  of 
philosophical  questions.  Even  at  his  best,  he  is  apt  to 
attribute  a  doctrine  of  Representation  ism  to  philosophers 
in  whose  theories  there  is  no  such  tendency  whatever,  to 
confuse  the  psychological  with  the  philosophical  question, 
and  to  relapse  into  that  very  doctrine 'of  Representationism 
against  which  he  so  earnestly  contends.  It  is,  therefore, 
greatly  to  the  credit  of  the  French  philosophers  of  the 
earlier  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  they  discovered 
the  deeper  elements  in  the  Scottish  Philosophy,  as  formu- 
lated by  its  founder — its  true  feeling  for  the  ethical  and 
practical  interests,  its  enthusiastic  acceptance  of  the  ex- 
perimental method,  its  preference  of  factual  observation 
to  abstract  speculation  and  systematic  completeness.  In 
consequence  of  these  characteristics  the  philosophy  of 
the  Scottish  school  became  the  official  philosophy  of 
France,  and  was  taught  in  its  colleges,  from  18 16  to  1870. 
In  America,  too,  this  philosophy  acquired  an  equal  influ- 
ence, and  it  is  to  a  Scottish  president  of  an  American 
university  that  we  owe  the  most  careful  account  of  its 
detailed  development.^ 

*  J.  M'Cosh,  The  Scottish  Philosophy  {\%T ^). 


PART   III 


THE   NINETEENTH   CENTURY 

The  philosophy  of  the  nineteenth  century  in  England 
is  no  longer  *  English  philosophy '  in  the  strict  sense 
in  which  the  philosophy  of  the  preceding  centuries  can 
be  so  described.  The  new  influence  of  the  great  German 
idealists,  and  especially  of  Kant,  from  whose  *  critical ' 
philosophy  these  systems  sprang,  is  now  to  be  traced 
as  a  determining  factor  in  the  thought  of  English  writers 
of  all  schools.  This  influence  is  partly  negative,  partly 
positive.  The  more  characteristically  English  movements 
of  thought  whose  earlier  history  we  have  traced  are  con- 
tinued in  the  nineteenth  century  with  a  growing  con- 
sciousness of  their  antagonism  to  the  absolute  idealism 
which  German  philosophers  have  developed  out  of 
the  Kantian  criticism  and  transcendentalism.  Mill  and 
Hamilton  alike  protest  against  the  vagaries,  as  they  regard 
them,  of  German  idealism  ;  while  the  idealistic  tendency 
which  we  have  seen  to  be  no  less  persistent,  though  less 
prominent,  in  the  English  philosophy  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  receives  a  fresh  impulse  and 
a  fresh  illumination  from  the  new  idealism  of  Germany. 
But  while  this  new  influence  of  Continental  thought 
is  not  to  be  denied  or  under-estimated,  it  must  not  be 
forgotten  that  the  movement  of  English  philosophy  is 
still,  as  before,  national  and  independent.  Whether  it 
sets  itself  in  conscious  and  active  opposition  to  the 
Kantian  and  Hegelian  movement  of  thought,  or  enthusi- 
astically proclaims  the  essential  truth  and  significance 
of  that  movement,  it  is  never  content  to  be  the  mere 

1237 


238         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

pupil.  Even  when  it  accepts  the  lesson  of  German 
idealism,  it  insists  upon  the  necessity  of  a  restatement  of 
that  lesson  in  its  own  teims,  upon  the  assimilation  of 
the  foreign  to  the  national  type  of  philosophy.  And 
if  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  importance  of  English 
philosophy  for  European  thought  is  not  so  great  as 
in  the  cadler  centuries,  that  the  centre  of  interest  has 
changed  from  England  to  Germany,  it  is  to  be  remembered 
that  it  was  the  philosophy  of  Hume  that  first,  according 
to  his  own  well-known  admission,  awoke  Kant  from  his 
dogmatic  slumber,  that  the  Kantian  philosophy  is  a  new 
departure  necessitated  by  the  issue  in  Hume's  scepticism 
of  that  empiricism  which  was  one  of  the  characteristic 
elements  in  English  philosophy. 

A  second  new  influence  which  is  to  be  noted,  especially 
in  the  development  of  English  empiricism  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  is  that  of  Natural  Science.  There  is  an  earlier 
phase  of  the  movement  which  is  strictly  a  continuation 
of  the  empiricism  and  associationism  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  represented  by  the  names  of  Bentham,  the  two 
Mills,  and  Bain.  Its  later  phase,  identified  with  the 
name  of  Spencer,  is  an  elaborate  effort  to  formulate  a 
*  scientific  '  or  evolutionary  philosophy,  alike  in  the  meta- 
physical and  in  the  ethical  field.  The  agnosticism  of 
Spencer  and  Huxley  is  also,  in  part,  the  result  of  an 
identification  of  the  scientific  with  the  philosophical 
view  of  the  universe,  or  of  the  limitation  of  knowledge  to 
the  phenomenal  standpoint  of  the  natural  sciences. 

In  the  movement  of  English  philosophy  in  the  century 
three  main  streams  of  thought  may  be  distinguished. 
First,  there  is  the  English  development  of  Hume's 
empiricism  into  utilitarianism,  associationism,  and  evolu- 
tionism, the  chief  names  being  Bentham,  James  Mill, 
J.  S.  Mill,  Bain,  and  Spencer.  Secondly,  there  is  the 
development  of  the  Scottish  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense 
by  Hamilton  into  the  doctrines  of  Natural  Realism  and 
Relativism  ;  its  issues  in  the  dualism  of  faith  and  reason,  as 
proclaimed  by  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  and  in  the  agnosticism 
of  Spencer  and   Huxley  ;  and  the  return  to  its  charac- 


THE   NINETEENTH  CENTURY     239 

teristic  point  of  view  in  Calderwood,  Martineau,  and 
Fraser.  Thirdly,  there  is  the  idealistic  answer  to  Hume 
as  formulated  in  the  spiritual  philosophy  of  Coleridge 
and  Newman,  in  the  absolute  idealism  of  Ferrier,  and  in 
the  Neo-Hegelian  philosophy  of  the  later  decades  of  the 
century,  associated  with  the  names  of  StirHng,  Cai.  d, 
Green,  and  Bradley. 


CHAPTER   I 

THE  ENGLISH  DEVELOPMENT  OF  HUME'S 
EMPIRICISM  :  UTILITARIANISM  (WITH  AS- 
SOCIATIONISM)  AND  EVOLUTIONISM 

I .    Utilitarianism  and  Associationism  :  Bentham^ 
James  Mi/ly  J.  S.  Mill,  Bain 

JFoR  the  Utilitarians  or  Benthamites,  as  they  were  called 
SSfier  the  founder  of  the  school,  philosophy  was  only  a 
means  to  social  and  political  reform.  They  were  not  so 
much  a  philosophical  school  as  a  political  party,  and  are 
better  described  as  '  philosophical  radicals.'  Their  Utili- 
tarianism was  rather  a  political  ideal  than  an  ethical 
principle,  while  their  common  empiricism  and  associa- 
tionism were  still  more  subordinate  to  the  practical, 
purposes  which  united  them  in  a  common  social  effort^ 
As  we  advance  from  Bentham  to  James  Mill,  and 
from  the  latter  to  J.  S.  Mill,  we  see  the  theoretical 
element  in  the  Utilitarian  creed  becoming  more  promi- 
nent. /Bentham's  interest  is  purely  practical ;  he 
preache§  Utilitarianism  as  an  ideal  of  social  and  political 
conduct.]  James  Mill  is  the  psychologist  of  the  school. 
As  Hoffding  says,  *  his  philosophical  importance  consists 
mainly  in  the  fact  that  he  attempted  to  supply  the 
psychological  basis  which  was  lacking  in  Bentham's 
ethics,'  ^  but  he  extends  the  application  of  the  principle  of 
Association  to  the  whole  field  of  human  knowledge. 
fy  S.  Mill  is  the  philosopher  of  the  school :  he  alone 
tempts  the  *  proof  of  the  principle  of  utility,  he  alone 

1  Hist,  of  Modern  Phil.,  ii.  369  (Eng.  trans.). 
340 


THE  UTILITARIANS  241 

investigates  the  nature  of  evidence  generally.  But  even 
J.  S.  Mill  does  not  concern  himself  w^ith  the  problem  of 
the  obligatoriness  of  the  general  happiness  upon  the 
individual,  except  in  a  psychological  and  practical  sense. 
The  claim  of  the  general  happiness  upon  the  individual  is 
assumed  by  all  alike  ;  their  common  problem  is  how  to 
induce  the  individual  to  recognise  this  claim  in  his 
conduct — the  problem  of  the  motivation  of  right  con- 
duct or  the  '  sanctions '  of  dnty\ 

The  efforts  of  Bentham  as  a  reformer  embraced  three 
different  but  closely  connected  spheres  :  the  reform  of  the 
law,  of  methods  of  punishment,  and  of  the  English  constitu- 
tion itself.  In  all  three  spheres  he  was  equally  radical  in  his 
ideas,  and  in  all  three  the  results  of  his  efforts  were  great 
and  far-reaching.  In  the  last  he  became  the  leader  of  an 
important,  though  small  political  group,  who  called  them- 
selves '  Utilitarians '  or  '  philosophical  radicals,'  and  whose 
efforts  were  directed,  not  to  any  abstract  or  Utopian  ideal, 
but  to  specific  reforms  which  fell  within  the  field  of  prac- 
tical politics.  The  great  result  of  these  efforts  was  the 
Reform  Act  of  1832,  for  the  passing  of  which  Bentham, 
chiefly  through  the  personal  influence  of  James  Mill,  is 
entitled  to  a  large  share  of  credit.  Bentham's  watchword 
was  Utility,  or  '  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 
number,'  which  he  substituted  for  the  battle-cry  of  the 
American  and  French  Revolutionists,  the  *  rights  of  man,' 
which  was  being  taken  up  in  England  at  the  time.  Man 
has  no  '  natural  rights,'  he  contends  ;  for  all  his  rights  he 
is  indebted  to  Law  ;  and  the  criterion  of  the  goodness  of 
Law  is  the  measure  in  which  its  observance  contributes  to 
the  general  happiness.  In  the  principle  of  utility  he  finds 
the  statement  of  the  true  ideal  of  democracy,  the  very 
antithesis  of  all  interests  narrower  than  that  of  the  com- 
munity as  a  whole,  the  condemnation  of  all  'sinister' 
private  or  class  interests  which  militate  against  the  public 
weal.  Renouncing  the  abstract  ideal  of  'equality'  as  a 
natural  right,  he  yet  asserts  the  equal  claim  of  every 
individual    to  happiness  j    his  ideal  is  that  of  the    most 

Q 


242  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

equal  distribution  of  happiness,  'the  greatest  happiness  of 
the  greatest  number,'  '  each  to  count  for  one  and  no  one 
for  more  than  one.'  Nor  is  it  permissible  to  limit  our 
consideration  to  the  members  of  our  own  community,  of 
our  own  country  ;  the  complete  expression  of  the  principle 
of  Utility  is  a  humanitarianism  which  recognises  the  claim 
of  eyery  human  being  to  equal  consideration. 

[The  standard,  then,  alike  of  public  and  private  conduct 
is  tKe  general  happiness,  and  the  moral  quality  of  any  action 
is  determined  by  its  pleasant  or  painful  consequences,  so 
far  as  these  enter  into  the  intention  of  the  agent.  The 
motive,  on  the  other  hand,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
morality  of  the  action,  and  is  in  all  cases  self-interest. 
Bentham,  that  is  to  say,  agrees  with  Tucker  and  Paley  in 
taking  an  altruistic  view  of  the  end  or  criterion,  and  an 
egoistic  view  of  the  motive,  of  virtuous  conduct.  His 
real  interest  is  in  making  the  appeal  to  the  self-interest 
of  the  individual  sufficiently  strong  to  induce  him  to 
subordinate  his  own  to  the  general  happiness  ;  in  other 
words,  in  making  the  'sanctions'  of  altruistic  conduct 
adequate.  Besides  the  legal,  he  recognises  the  popular, 
the  social,  and  the  religious  sanctions  ;  as  it  is  the  function 
of  the  legislator  to  make  the  former  adequate,  it  is  the 
function  of  a  true  education  to  see  to  the  efficiency  of  the 
latter.  The  only  addition  made  by  Bentham  to  previous 
statements  of  hedonistic  ethics  is  his  insistence  upon  the 
necessity  of  an  exact  calculation  of  the  consequences  of 
our  action  as  the  only  sufficient  guide  to  right  conduct, 
and  his  construction  of  a  'hedonistic  calculus'  for  this 
end.  We  must  take  account,  not  only  of  the  intensity 
and  duration  of  each  pleasure,  but  also  of  its  certainly, 
propinquity,  fecundity  or  fruitfulness  in  further  pleasures, 
and  its  purity  or  barrenness  in  painful  consequences.  The 
entire  calculation  is,  of  course,  in  terms  of  quantity  ;  the 
end  is  the  production  of  the  maximum  of  possible  pleasure 
and  the  minimum  of  possible  pain.J, 

The  chief  importance  of  James  Mill's  Analysis  of  the 
Phenomena  of  the  Human  Mind  is  psychological,  but  it  is  in 


THE   UTILITARIANS  243 

an  ethical  interest  that  the  psychological  investigation  is 
undertaken.  Bentham  had  been  satisfied  with  a  crude 
doctrine  of  psychological  hedonism,  which  he  rightly 
identified  with  egoism ;  and  his  reconciliation  of  psycho- 
logical egoism  with  ethical  altruism  had  been  equally  hasty 
and  ill-considered.  Mill's  object  is  to  show,  by  the  em- 
ployment of  the  principle  of  Association,  the  psychological 
possibility  of  altruistic  or  disinterested  conduct  on  the  part 
of  the  egoistic  or  pleasure-seeking  individual.  He  does 
this  by  developing  the  doctrine  of  Association  in  two 
directions  :  first,  by  insisting  upon  the  growth  of  '  in- 
separable associations'  which  transform  what  had  at  first 
been  merely  means  into  ends  which  are  sought  for  their 
own  sake  or  disinterestedly,  and  secondly,  by  interpreting 
the  result  of  association  after  the  analogy  of  a  chemical 
product  which  is  different  from  the  sum  of  its  elements, 
rather  than  as  a  mechanical  combination  of  these  elements. 
This  analysis  of  what  had  seemed  to  be  simple  and  ultimate 
into  a  complex  of  simpler  elements  ,is  at  the  same  time 
intended  as  a  refutation  of  the  intuitional  or  *  moral  sense ' 
interpretation  of  conscience,  and  as  a  demonstration  of  the 
empirical  and  utilitarian,  as  against  a  rationalistic  and  in- 
tuitional account  of  the  nature  of  morality.  This  ethical 
significance  of  the  whole  inquiry  is  made  more  clear  in 
the  Fragment  on  Mackintosh^  in  which  Mill  bitterly  attacks 
a  *  theory  of  the  moral  sentiments '  which,  refusing  to 
follow  out  the  doctrine  of  Association,  as  he  thinks,  to 
its  full  logical  consequences,  accepts  the  ultimateness  of 
the  moral,  as  distinguished  from  the  utilitarian,  element 
in  the  judgments  of  conscience. 

i3ut  the  scope  and  interest  of  the  Analysis  are  far  from 
being  limited  to  ethics  ;  indeed,  as  we  read  it,  we  are 
apt  to  lose  sight  of  its  underlying  ethical  purpose.  It  is 
with  justice  that  J.  S.  Mill  describes  his  father  as  'the 
reviver  and  second  founder  of  the  Association  psycho- 
logy '  >  ^  ^or  in  his  hands  that  psychology  becomes  the 
basis  not  merely  of  an  ethical  theory  but  of  a  theory  of 

.  *  Preface  to  ed.  of  Analysis,  p.  xii. 


244  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

knowledge  and  reality.  The  result  is  a  restatement  of  the 
Humian  view  of  the  world  and  the  self,  and  of  the  Humian 
reduction  of  our  so-called  knowledge  to  customary  belief. 

The  basis  of  the  theory  is  laid  in  an  extreme  nominal- 
ism. All  terms  alike  are  simply  the  expression  of  the 
meaning  of  names,  and  the  only  reality  corresponding  to 
the  name  is  some  particular  sensation  or  idea.  General 
terms  are  the  names  of  classes,  and  these  classes  consist  of 
individuals.  '  The  business  of  classification  is  merely  a 
process  of  naming,  and  is  all  resolvable  into  association.'  ^ 
*Men  were  led  to  class  solely  for  the  purpose  of 
economising  in  the  use  of  names.'  ^  He  entirely  ignores  the 
underlying  connotation  which  accounts  for  the  denotation 
of  the  general  term.  As  J.  S.  Mill  says,  '  The  only 
meaning  of  predicating  a  quality  at  all,  is  to  affirm  a 
resemblance.' 3  James  Mill  himself  has  to  admit  that 
the  '  particular  principle '  of  association  concerned  in 
classification  is  resemblance,  which,  though  he  suggests 
that  it  might  possibly  be  reduced  to  the  principle  of 
contiguity  (since  like  particulars  occur,  and  therefore 
recur,  together),  he  finally  accepts  as  an  independent 
principle. 

The  resulting  theory  of  predication,  as  J.  S.  Mill  points 
out,  ignores  the  element  of  belief  involved  in  it.  'The 
characteristic  difference  between  a  predication  and  any 
other  form  of  speech,  is,  that  it  does  not  merely  bring  to 
mind  a  certain  object  (which  is  the  only  function  of  a 
mark,  merely  as  such)  ;  it  asserts  something  respecting 
it.  .  .  .  Whatever  view  we  adopt  of  the  psychological 
nature  of  Belief,  it  is  necessary  to  distinguish  between  the 
mere  suggestion  to  the  mind  of  a  certain  order  among 
sensations  or  ideas — such  as  takes  place  when  we  think 
of  the  alphabet,  or  the  numeration  table — and  the  indica- 
tion that  this  order  is  an  actual  fact,  which  is  occurring, 
or  which  has  occurred  once  or  oftener,  or  which,  in 
certain  definite  circumstances,  always  occurs ;  which  are 
the  things  indicated  as  true  by  an  affirmative  predication, 

*  Analysis,  i.  269.  *  Ibid.,  i.  260.  *  Ibid.,  i.  261,  note. 


THE    UTILITARIANS  245 

and  as  false  by  a  negative  one.'  ^  Belief,  according 
to  James  Mill,  differs  from  imagination  merely  in  the 
strength  of  the  association  in  the  one  case  as  com- 
pared with  the  other.  The  association  of  the  ideas  is, 
in  belief,  inseparable ;  in  imagination,  separable.  The 
proof  of  this  would  be,  J.  S.  Mill  says,  'the  greatest 
of  all  the  triumphs  of  the  Association  psychology,'  ^ 
but  he  does  not  think  the  attempted  proof  successful. 
There  may  be  inseparable  association  without  belief, 
and  belief  without  inseparable  association.  'The  differ- 
ence between  belief  and  mere  imagination  is  the  differ- 
ence between  recognising  something  as  a  reality  in  nature 
and  regarding  it  as  a  mere  thought  of  our  own.'^  It 
is  this  element  of  belief,  thus  objectively  interpreted, 
that,  according  to  J.  S.  Mill,  distinguishes  memory  from 
imagination,  a  difference  which  James  Mill  interprets, 
after  Hume,  as  one  merely  of  degree.*  The  distinction 
between  belief  and  imagination,  J.  S.  Mill  contends,  resists 
analysis  :  it  must  be  accepted  as '  ultimate  and  primordial.'  ^ 
In  the  case  of  the  Self,  as  in  that  of  Belief,  J.  S.  Mill 
finds  his  father's  theory  inadequate.  The  explanation  of 
personal  identity  in  terms  of  Association  '  removes  the 
outer  veil,  or  husk,  as  it  were,  which  wraps  up  the  idea 
of  the  Ego.  But  after  this  is  removed,  there  remains 
an  inner  covering,  which,  as  far  as  I  can  perceive,  is 
impenetrable.'  Memory  is  explained  by  reference  to 
Self,  and  Self  by  reference  to  Memory.  'By  doing 
so,  we  explain  neither.  We  only  show  that  the  two 
things  are  essentially  the  same.'*  Here,  again,  we 
come  to  'something  ultimate.'  James  Mill  speaks  of 
'  that  thread  of  consciousness,  drawn  out  in  succession, 
which  I  call  myself,''  of  'that  thread  of  conscious- 
ness in  which,  to  me,  my  being  consists,'  'the  train  of 
consciousness,  which  I  call  myself.'^  But,  as  J.  S. 
Mill  contends,  the  bond  which  unites  these  various 
states    in    the    consciousness  of  an   identical  Self  is  not 

^  Analysis,  i.  162-3,  °ote.        '  Ibid.,  i.  402.         3  Jbid.,  i.  418. 

*  Ibid.,  i.  423.  ^  Ibid.,  i.  412.         •  Ibid.,  ii.  173,  174. 

'  Ibid.,  i.  17,  *  Ibid.,  ii.  197. 


246  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

thereby  explained.  '  This  succession  of  feelings,  which 
I  call  my  memory  of  the  past,  is  that  by  which  I  dis- 
tinguish my  Self.  Myself  is  the  person  who  had  that 
series  of  feelings,  and  I  know  nothing  of  myself,  by  direct 
knowledge,  except  that  I  had  them.  But  there  is  a  bond 
of  some  sort  among  all  the  parts  of  the  series,  which  makes 
me  say  that  they  were  feelings  of  a  person  who  was  the 
same  person  throughout,  and  a  different  person  from  those 
who  had  any  of  the  parallel  successions  of  feelings ;  and 
this  bond,  to  me,  constitutes  my  Ego.  Here,  I  think,  the 
question  must  rest,  until  some  psychologist  succeeds  better 
than  any  one  has  yet  done  in  shewing  a  mode  in  which  the 
analysis  can  be  carried  further.'  ^ 

The  general  criticism  which  J.  S.  Mill  makes  upon  his 
father's  work  is  one  with  which  there  will  be  general 
agreement.  'It  is  chiefly  ...  in  leading  him  to  identify 
two  ultimate  facts  with  one  another,  that  his  love  of 
simplification,  in  itself  a  feeling  highly  worthy  of  a 
philosopher,  seems  to  mislead  him.'  2  On  the  other 
hand,  we  must  admit,  with  the  same  kindly  though 
candid  critic,  that  the  Analysis  abounds  in  'specimens  of 
clear  and  vigorous  statement,  going  straight  to  the  heart 
of  the  matter,  and  dwelling  on  it  just  long  enough  and  no 
longer  than  necessary.'^  And  if  we  must  also  agree  with 
Leslie  Stephen,  that  James  Mill  was  'at  most  a  man  of 
remarkable  talent  and  the  driest  and  sternest  of  logicians,' * 
and  with  Macaulay  that  his  style  is  '  as  dry  as  that  of 
Euclid's  Elements,'  we  must  remember  that,  as  the  former 
writer  says,  '  Mill,  as  a  publicist,  a  historian,  and  a  busy 
official,  had  not  had  much  time  to  spare  for  purely  philo- 
sophic reading.  He  was  not  a  professor  in  want  of  a 
system,  but  an  energetic  man  of  business,  wishing  to 
strike  at  the  root  of  the  superstitions  to  which  his  political 
opponents  appealed  for  support.'  ^ 

One  reason  for  the  inadequate  appreciation  of  James 
Mill  by  his  contemporaries  was,  in  the  judgment  of  his 

1  Analysis,  ii.  17?.  *  Ibid.,  ii.  380,        ^  /^j^f,^  j,  jj^. 

•  English  Utilitarians,  ii.  38.  »  Op.  cit.^  ii.  288. 


JOHN   STUART    MILL  247 

son,  that  he  was  not  thoroughly  in  sympathy  with  the 
spirit  of  his  own  age.  *  As  Brutus  was  called  the  last  of 
the  Romans,  so  was  he  the  last  of  the  eighteenth 
century ;  he  continued  its  tone  of  thought  and  senti- 
ment into  the  nineteenth  (though  not  unmodified  nor 
unimproved),  partaking  neither  in  the  good  nor  in  the 
bad  influences  of  the  reaction  against  the  eighteenth 
century,  which  was  the  great  characteristic  of  the  first 
half  of  the  nineteenth.'  ^  John  Stuart  Mill  himself  belongs 
to  the  new  age  ;  but  the  influence  of  Bentham  and  his 
father  remained  with  him  to  the  last,  and  the  result  is  a 
curious  mingling  of  the  spirit  of  the  two  centuries.  The 
key  at  once  to  the  importance  and  to  the  defects  of  his 
philosophy  is  to  be  found  in  the  peculiarity  of  his  position 
as  the  thinker  of  an  age  of  transition  ;  in  the  fact  that  he 
represents  two  points  of  view,  which  he  considers  himself 
to  have  reconciled,  but  whose  mutual  opposition  he  never 
sufficiently  grasped  to  effect  their  reconciliation, — the 
points  of  view  of  the  eighteenth  and  of  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  was  with  deliberate  purpose  that  he  under- 
took the  task  of  reconciliation.  *  Though,  at  one  period 
of  my  progress,  I  for  some  time  undervalued  that  great 
century  [the  eighteenth],  I  never  joined  in  the  reaction 
against  it,  but  kept  as  firm  hold  of  one  side  of  the  truth  as 
I  took  of  the  other.  The  fight  between  the  nineteenth 
century  and  the  eighteenth  always  reminded  me  of  the 
battle  about  the  shield,  one  side  of  which  was  white  and 
the  other  black.  I  marvelled  at  the  blind  rage  with  which 
the  combatants  rushed  against  one  another.  I  applied  to 
them,  and  to  Coleridge  himself,  many  of  Coleridge's 
sayings  about  half  truths  ;  and  Goethe's  device,  "  many- 
sidedness,"  was  one  which  I  would  most  willingly,  at  this 
period,  have  taken  for  mine.' 2  'The  besetting  danger,' 
he  remarks  in  his  essay  on  Coleridge,  *is  not  so  much 
of  embracing  falsehood  for  truth,  as  of  mistaking  part  of 
the  truth  for  the  whole.' ^  In  *the  Germano-Coleridgian 
doctrine '  he  sees  *  the  revolt  of  the  human  mind  against 

^  Autobiography,  p.  204.  *  Ibid.,  p.  162. 

'  Disserlations,  i.  399. 


248  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

the  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth  century.'  '  It  is  onto- 
logical,  because  that  was  experimental ;  conservative, 
because  that  w^as  innovative  ;  religious,  because  so  much 
of  that  was  infidel ;  concrete  and  historical,  because  that 
was  matter-of-fact  and  prosaic.'-^  He  regards  Bentham 
and  Coleridge  as  *  the  two  great  seminal  minds  of  England 
in  their  age.'^  'Whoever  could  master  the  premises 
and  combine  the  methods  of  both,  would  possess  the  entire 
English  philosophy  of  his  age.  Coleridge  used  to  say  that 
every  one  is  born  either  a  Platonist  or  an  Aristotelian  :  it 
may  be  similarly  affirmed,  that  every  Englishman  of  the 
present  day  is  by  implication  either  a  Benthamite  or  a 
Coleridgian  ;  holds  views  of  human  affairs  which  can 
only  be  proved  true  on  the  principles  either  of  Bentham 
or  of  Coleridge.'  ^  He  is  convinced  of  *  the  importance, 
in  the  present  imperfect  state  of  mental  and  social  science, 
of  antagonist  modes  of  thought :  which,  it  will  one  day 
be  felt,  are  as  necessary  to  one  another  in  speculation, 
as  mutually  checking  powers  are  in  the  political  con- 
stitution.' * 

It  is  in  this  deliberate  effort  to  combine  two  antagonistic 
but,  as  he  believes,  complementary  points  of  view,  rather 
than  in  any  defect  of  philosophic  strenuousness  and  per- 
sistence, that  the  explanation  of  Mill's  '  inconsistencies '  is 
to  be  found.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  by  the  characteristic 
temper  of  his  mind,  as  well  as  by  reason  of  his  position  in 
the  history  of  thought,  he  was  incapable  of  resting  in  any 
one  position  as  finally  satisfying  ;  that,  as  Lord  Morley 
has  said,  '  he  never  desisted,  or  stood  still,'  but  '  was  of  the 
Socratic  household,'  in  that  his  mind  was  always  open  to 
the  apprehension  of  new  truth,  always  ready  to  listen  to 
the  voice  of  the  argument  and  to  accept  its  conclusions, 
however  disturbing  to  his  previous  convictions.  He  him- 
self speaks  of  '  my  great  readiness  and  eagerness  to  learn 
from  everybody,  and  to  make  room  in  my  opinions  for 
every  new  acquisition  by  adjusting  the  old  and  the 
new  to  one  another.'  ^     As  Professor  MacCunn  has  said, 

^  Dissertations,  i.  403.  '  Ibid.,\.  331.  *  Ibid.,  i.  397. 

*  Ibid.,  i.  399.  '  Autobiography,  p.  252. 


JOHN   STUART   MILL  249 

'  Better  Mill's  "  inconsistencies  "  than  the  limited  com- 
pleteness of  Bentham.  Better  his  unsolved  difficulties 
than  the  arrogant,  narrow,  self-confident  logic  of  his  father. 
For  they  are,  at  any  rate,  the  fruits  of  an  enlarged  outlook 
and  an  enriched  experience.'^ 

But  the  inconsistencies  remain,  and  they  are  of  the  very 
essence  of  Mill's  position  as  a  transition-thinker.  With 
all  his  new  insight,  he  never  really  outgrew  Benthamism, 
he  never  sufficiently  revised  his  former  premises  in  the 
light  of  the  new  truths  which  he  found  himself  compelled 
to  admit.  He  writes  to  Carlyle  :  '  You  will  see,  partly, 
with  what  an  immense  number  and  variety  of  explanations 
my  utilitarianism  must  be  taken  and  that  these  explana- 
tions affect  its  essence,  not  merely  its  accidental  forms.  ... 
I  am  still,  and  am  likely  to  remain,  a  utilitarian,  though 
not  one  of  "  the  people  called  utilitarians " ;  indeed, 
having  scarcely  one  of  my  secondary  premises  in  common 
with  them  ;  nor  a  utilitarian  at  all,  unless  in  quite  another 
sense  from  what  perhaps  any  one  except  myself  under- 
stands by  the  word.'  ^  '  What  is  now  wanted,'  he  writes 
in  his  Diary  of  1854,  'is  the  creed  of  Epicurus  warmed 
by  the  additional  element  of  an  enthusiastic  love  of  the 
general  good.'  ^  When  we  study  the  ethical  theory, 
which  its  author  still  calls  'Utilitarianism,' and  thus  insists 
upon  affiliating  to  that  of  Bentham,  we  cannot  but  feel 
with  Martineau,  that  '  these  modifications  were  torn  from 
their  connection  and  taken  over  to  the  Bentham  side 
without  their  root.'  *  Although  he  had  felt  the  spell  of 
an  ethical  idealism  the  acceptance  of  which  implied  the 
surrender  at  once  of  the  egoism  and  of  the  hedonism  of 
the  theory  which  he  had  been  brought  up  to  believe  in  as 
true,  he  seems  to  have  been  persuaded  that  the  Utilita- 
rianism of  Bentham  was  capable  of  being  developed  into  a 
theory  which  would  do  justice  to  all  those  ideal  aspects  of 
life  and  conduct  which  Bentham  had  ignored  or  misunder- 
stood. Similarly  in  political  philosophy,  after  growing  up 
in  the  atmosphere  of  the  extreme   individualism  of  the 

^  Six  Radical  Thinkers^  p.  86.  ^  Letters,  i.  91. 

'  Letters,  ii.  385.  *  Dissertations,  i.  493. 


g^ 


2JO  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

laissex  fa'tre  doctrine  of  the  Utilitarians  or  *  Philosophical 
Radicals,'  he  came  later  under  the  influence  of  French 
socialism  ;  yet,  after  making  remarkable  concessions  to 
the  latter  theory  in  his  Political  Economy^  he  wrote  that 
essay  on  Liberty  which  has  been  regarded  ever  since  as 
the  classical  statement  of  individualism.  Finally,  so  far 
as  the  theory  of  knowledge  and  reality  is  concerned,  in 
spite  of  the  lessons  which  he  learned  from  German  idealism 
as  conveyed  to  the  English  mind  by  Coleridge  and  Carlyle, 
he  never  saw  his  way  to  the  surrender  of  that  doctrine  of 
Association  ism  which  he  had  been  taught  by  his  father  to 
regard  as  the  final  solution  of  all  metaphysical  problems. 

The  reading  of  Bentham's  work,  in  Dumont's  transla- 
tion, was,  Mill  tells  us  in  the  Autobiography^  '  an  epoch  in 
my  life  ;  one  of  the  turning-points  in  my  mental  history. 
My  previous  education  had  been,  in  a  certain  sense, 
already  a  course  of  Benthamism.  The  Benthamite 
standard  of  "  the  greatest  happiness  "  was  that  which  I  had 
always  been  taught  to  apply.  .  .  .  Yet  in  the  first  pages  of 
Bentham  it  burst  upon  me  with  all  the  force  of  novelty.' 
What  chiefly  impressed  him  was  Bentham's  exposure  of 
the  concealed  dogmatism  of  other  ethical  theories.  'It 
had  not  struck  me  before,  that  Bentham's  principle  put 
an  end  to  all  this.  The  feeling  rushed  upon  me,  that  all 
previous  moralists  were  superseded,  and  that  here  indeed 
was  the  commencement  of  a  new  era  in  thought.'  This 
impression  was  confirmed  by  the  scientific  form  of 
Bentham's  reasoning,  by  '  the  method  of  detail '  which  he 
employed.  To  the  theoretical  satisfaction  were  added 
*  the  most  inspiring  prospects  of  practical  improvement  in 
human  affairs ' :  *  at  every  page  he  seemed  to  open  a 
clearer  and  broader  conception  of  what  human  opinions 
and  institutions  ought  to  be,  how  they  might  be  made 
what  they  ought  to  be,  and  how  far  removed  from 
it  they  now  are.  .  .  .  When  I  laid  down  the  first  volume 
of  the  Trait^,  I  had  become  a  different  being.  The 
"  principle  of  utility,"  understood  as  Bentham  understood 
it,  and  applied  in  the  manner  in  which  he  applied  it  .  .  . 


JOHN   STUART    MILL  251 

fell  exactly  into  its  place  as  the  keystone  which  held 
together  the  detached  and  fragmentary  parts  of  my 
knowledge  and  beliefs.  It  gave  unity  to  my  conceptions 
of  things.  I  now  had  opinions ;  a  creed,  a  doctrine,  a 
philosophy  ;  in  one  among  the  best  senses  of  the  word, 
a  religion  ;  the  inculcation  and  diffusion  of  which  could 
be  made  the  principal  outward  purpose  of  a  life.  And  I 
had  a  grand  conception  laid  before  me  of  changes  to 
be  effected  in  the  condition  of  mankind  through  that 
doctrine.'^  Though  he  afterwards  became  conscious  of 
the  serious  limitations  of  Bentham's  philosophical  outlook, 
and  found  it  necessary  to  incorporate  in  the  theory  many 
elements  of  crucial  importance  which  its  author  had 
ignored,  Mill's  early  enthusiasm  for  the  *  principle  of 
utility '  never  really  waned.  In  the  essay  on  Whewell's 
moral  philosophy  (1852)  he  says:  'It  is  by  his  method 
chiefly  that  Bentham,  as  we  think,  justly  earned  a  position 
in  moral  science  analogous  to  that  of  Bacon  in  physical. 
It  is  because  he  was  the  first  to  enter  into  the  right  mode 
of  working  ethical  problems,  though  he  worked  many  of 
them,  as  Bacon  did  physical,  on  insufficient  data.'  2  It 
is  necessary,  he  insists  in  the  Utilitarianism^  to  re- 
duce our  various  moral  principles,  accepted  by  the  in- 
tuitionists  as  equally  ultimate,  to  'one  first  principle,  or 
common  ground  of  obligation.'  'The  non-existence  of 
an  acknowledged  first  principle  has  made  ethics  not  so 
much  a  guide  as  a  consecration  of  men's  actual  senti- 
ments.' And  he  agrees  with  Bentham  that  '  the  funda- 
mental principle  of  morality,  and  the  source  of  moral 
obligation '  is  to  be  found  in  the  principle  of  utility,  or 
*  the  influence  of  actions  on  happiness.'^ 

Perhaps  the  main  factor  in  effecting  the  transition  from 
Benthamism  to  a  more  idealistic  version  of  the  Utilitarian 
theory  was  the  mental  crisis  through  which  Mill  passed 
in  1826,  and  from  which  he  found  deliverance  in  the 
study  of  Wordsworth.  The  almost  complete  loss  of 
happiness,  which  was  the  result  of  a  too    introspective 

^  Autobiog.,  pp.  64-66.       *  Dissertations,  ii.  462.        '  Utilit.,  ch.  i. 


2  52  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

pursuit  of  it,  taught  him  the  truth  of  '  what  at  that  time  I 
certainly  had  never  heard  of,  the  anti-self-consciousness 
theory  of  Carlyle.  I  never,  indeed,  wavered  in  the  con- 
viction that  happiness  is  the  test  of  all  rules  of  conduct, 
and  the  end  of  life.  But  I  now  thought  that  this  end  was 
only  to  be  attained  by  not  making  it  the  direct  end. 
Those  only  are  happy  (I  thought)  who  have  their  minds 
fixed  on  some  object  other  than  their  own  happiness  ;  on 
the  happiness  of  others,  on  the  improvement  of  mankind, 
even  on  some  art  or  pursuit,  followed  not  as  a  means,  but 
as  itself  an  ideal  end.  Aiming  thus  at  something  else, 
they  find  happiness  by  the  way.  .  .  .  Ask  yourself  whether 
you  are  happy,  and  you  cease  to  be  so.  The  only  chance 
is  to  treat,  not  happiness,  but  some  end  external  to  it,  as 
the  purpose  of  life.  .  .  .  This  theory  now  became  the 
basis  of  my  philosophy  of  life.'-^  This  altered  emphasis 
was  further  encouraged  by  his  friendship  with  Carlyle, 
Maurice,  and  Sterling,  as  well  as  by  the  study  of  the 
writings  of  Coleridge  and  the  acquaintance  which  he 
thus  acquired  with  German  ideaHsm. 

His  close  association  with  the  leaders  of  the  movement 
called  *  Philosophical  Radicalism,'  and  especially  his  regard 
for  his  father's  feelings,  restrained  Mill  from  the  expression 
of  a  dissent  which  he  had  gradually  learned  to  entertain 
from  the  theory  of  Utilitarianism,  as  formulated  by 
Bentham  and  accepted  by  his  followers.  But  two  years 
after  the  death  of  his  father,  he  published  in  the  London 
and  JVestminster  Review  (1832)  an  essay  on  Bentham 
which  clearly  shows  how  far  he  had  travelled  from  orthodox 
Benthamism.  While  still  emphasising  Bentham's  merits 
as  a  practical  reformer.  Mill  in  this  essay  depreciates  in  the 
most  serious  way  his  qualities  as  a  moralist.  His  fatal 
defect  is  his  narrowness  of  moral  vision,  his  limitation  of 
view  ;  and  this,  in  turn,  is  the  result  of  his  defect  of 
sympathy  and  imagination.  Bentham's  disregard  of  all 
previous  theories,  as  *  vague  generalities,'  has  blinded  him  to 
much  that  is  essential  in  the  moral  nature  of  man  :  *  these 

*  Autobiography,  p,  142. 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  253 

generalities  contained  the  whole  unanalysed  experience  of 
the  human  race.'  ^  This  failure  to  take  account  of  *  the 
collective  mind  of  the  human  race,'  as  reflected  in  the 
theories  of  other  philosophers,  was  the  more  disastrous, 
in  Bentham's  case,  on  account  of  ^the  incompleteness  of 
his  own  mind  as  a  representative  of  universal  human 
nature.'  'In  many  of  the  most  natural  and  strongest 
feelings  of  human  nature  he  had  no  sympathy  ;  from  many 
of  its  graver  experiences  he  was  altogether  cut  off.'  ^ 
'  He  saw  accordingly  in  man  little  but  what  the  vulgarest 
eye  can  see  ;  recognised  no  diversities  of  character  but 
such  as  he  who  runs  may  read.'  The  result  is  that  he 
was  'a  systematic  half-thinker.'  'The  truths  which  are 
not  Bentham's,  which  his  philosophy  takes  no  account 
of,  are  many  and  important  .  .  .  and  it  is  a  com- 
paratively easy  task  that  is  reserved  for  us,  to  harmonise 
those  truths  with  his.  To  reject  his  half  of  the  truth 
because  he  overlooked  the  other  half,  would  be  to  fall 
into  his  error  without  having  his  excuse.'  ^ 

Among  the  truths  which  Bentham  failed  to  recognise, 
Mill  specially  mentions  that  '  man  is  never  recognised  by 
him  as  a  being  capable  of  pursuing  spiritual  perfection  as 
an  end  ;  of  desiring,  for  its  own  sake,  the  conformity  of 
his  own  character  to  his  standard  of  excellence,  without 
hope  of  good  or  fear  of  evil  from  other  source  than  his 
own  inward  consciousness.  Even  in  the  more  limited 
"«form  of  Conscience,  this  great  fact  in  human  nature 
escapes  him.  Nothing  is  more  curious  than  the  absence 
of  recognition  in  any  of  his  writings  of  the  existence 
of  conscience.'*  Similarly  with  'self-respect.'  And 
*  he  but  faintly  recognises,  as  a  fact  in  human  nature, 
the  pursuit  of  any  other  ideal  end  for  its  own  sake.'  ^ 
'  How  far,'  Mill  asks, '  will  this  view  of  human  nature  and 
life  carry  any  one  ?  .  .  .  What  will  it  do  for  the  individual 
and  what  for  society  ?  It  will  do  nothing  for  the 
conduct  of  the  individual,  beyond  prescribing  some  of  the 
more  obvious  dictates  of  worldly  prudence  and  outward 

*  Dissertations,  i.  351.  '  Ibid.,  i.  353.  ^  Ibid.,  i,  357. 

*  Ibid.,  i.  359.  •  Ibid.,  i.  360. 


ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

probity  and  beneficence.  ...  It  will  enable  a  society  which 
has  attained  a  certain  state  of  spiritual  development,  and 
the  maintenance  of  which  in  that  state  is  otherwise 
provided  for,  to  prescribe  the  rules  by  which  it  may 
protect  its  material  interests.  It  will  do  nothing  .  .  . 
for  the  spiritual  interests  of  society.'  ^  If  the  principle 
of  utility  is  to  be  justly  interpreted,  it  must  be  applied  to 
all  the  facts  of  our  moral  experience.  In  particular,  it 
must  explain,  not  ignore  or  explain  away,  the  conscien- 
tious feelings  of  mankind  ;  it  must  take  account  of,  and 
^interpret,  the  ideal  interests  of  human  life.  J  In  the  essay 
on  Liberty,  pubilsTied  m  1^59,  but  ^nrst  planned  and 
written  as  a  short  essay  in  1854,'  he  says:  *I  regard 
utility  as  the  ultimate  appeal  on  all  ethical  questions  ;  but 
it  must  be  utility  in  the  largest  sense,  grounded  on  the 
permanent  interests  of  man  as  a  progressive  being.'  2 
He  adopts  as  the  motto  of  the  essay  the  words  of  Von 
Humboldt  :  *The  grand,  leading  principle,  towards  which 
every  argument  unfolded  in  these  pages  directly  converges, 
is  the  absolute  and  essential  importance  of  human  develop- 
ment in  its  richest  diversity.'  He  quotes  with  approval 
the  same  author's  doctrine  that  *  the  end  of  man,  or  that 
which  is  prescribed  by  the  eternal  or  immutable  dictates 
of  reason,  and  not  suggested  by  vague  and  transient 
desires,  is  the  highest  and  most  harmonious  development 
I  of  his  powers  to  a  complete  and  consistent  whole,'  and 
that,  therefore,  the  object  'towards  which  every  human 
being  must  ceaselessly  direct  his  efforts,  and  on  which 
especially  those  who  design  to  influence  their  fellow-men 
must  ever  keep  their  eyes,  is  the  individuality  of  power 
and  development.'  3  To  '  individuality  as  one  of  the 
elements  of  well-being'  he  devotes  perhaps  the  most 
important  chapter  of  the  work. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to  find  Mill,  in  the  essay 
on  Utilitarianismy  first  published  as  a  series  of  articles 
in  Eraser's  JUagazine  in  1861,  announcing  his  great 
innovation  upon   all  previous  versions  of  the   hedonistic 

^  Dissertatums J  i.  363-5.         *  Liberty,  Introd.         '  Ibid.,  ch.  iii. 


JOHN   STUART   MILL  255 

theory  of  morals — the  doctrine  that  pleasures  diflfer  in 
kind  or  quality,  as  well  as  in  quantity  or  degree  ;  that 
mental  are  superior  to  bodily  pleasures,  not  only,  as 
previous  hedonists  have  insisted,  in  their  'circumstantial 
advantages,'  but  in  their  'intrinsic  nature.'  'It  is  quite 
compatible  with  the  principle  of  utility  to  recognise 
the  fact  that  some  kinds  of  pleasure  are  more  desirable  , 
and  more  valuable  than  others.  It  would  be  absurd 
that  while,  in  estimating  all  other  things,  quality  is 
considered  as  well  as  quantity,  the  estimation  of  plea- 
sures should  be  supposed  to  depend  on  quantity  alone.' 
'  A  being  of  higher  faculties  requires  more  to  make 
him  happy,  is  capable  probably  of  more  acute  suffering, 
and  certainly  accessible  to  it  at  more  points,  than  one 
of  an  inferior  type  ;  but  in  spite  of  these  liabilities,  he 
can  never  really  wish  to  sink  into  what  he  feels  to 
be  a  lower  grade  of  existence.'  This  unwillingness 
is  due  to  'a  sense  of  dignity,  which  all  human  beings 
possess  in  one  form  or  another,  and  in  some,  though 
by  no  means  in  exact,  proportion  to  their  higher  faculties, 
and  which  is  so  essential  a  part  of  the  happiness  of  those 
in  whom  it  is  strong  that  nothing  which  conflicts  with 
it  could  be,  otherwise  than  momentarily,  an  object  of 
desire  to  them.'^ 

Similarly  he  recognises  the  sense  of  duty  or  '  the  con- 
scientious feelings  of  mankind,'  as  the '  internal  sanction  '  of 
right  conduct,  which  he  adds  to  the  '  external  sanctions ' 
of  Bentham.  'Its  binding  force  .  .  .  consists  in  the  ex- 
istence of  a  mass  of  feeling  which  must  be  broken  through 
in  order  to  do  what  violates  our  standard  of  right,  and  which, 
if  we  do  nevertheless  violate  that  standard,  will  probably 
have  to  be  encountered  afterwards  in  the  form  of  remorse. 
Whatever  theory  we  have  of  the  nature  or  origin  of 
conscience,  this  is  what  essentially  constitutes  it.'  It 
does  not  follow  that,  because  the  '  moral  feelings '  are 
not  innate  but  acquired,  they  are  the  less  natural :  *  the 
moral  faculty,  if  not  a   part  of  our  nature,  is  a  natural 

'   UHlit.y  ch.  ii. 


256         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

outgrowth  from  it.'  There  is  '  a  natural  basis  of  senti- 
ment for  utilitarian  morality,'  in  which  its  real  strength 
is  found.  *This  firm  foundation  is  that  of  the  social 
feelings  of  mankind ;  the  desire  to  be  in  unity  with 
our  fellow  creatures.  .  .  .  This  feeling  in  most  individuals 
is  much  inferior  in  strength  to  their  selfish  feelings,  and 
is  often  wanting  altogether.  But  to  those  who  have 
it,  it  possesses  all  the  characters  of  a  natural  feeling. 
It  does  not  present  itself  to  their  minds  as  a  superstition 
of  education,  or  a  law  despotically  imposed  by  the  power 
of  society,  but  as  an  attribute  which  it  would  not  be 
well  for  them  to  be  without.  This  conviction  is  the  ulti- 
mate sanction  of  the  greatest  happiness  morality.'  ^ 

Although  Hume  had  recognised  the  existence  of 
sympathy  or  disinterested  regard  for  the  general  happiness, 
Bentham,  like  Paley,  had  insisted  upon  self-interest  as  the 
only  possible  motive  of  human  conduct.  Mill  affirms 
the  possibility  of  altruism  in  the  motive,  as  well  as  in 
the  end  or  criterion,  of  right  action.  *  Let  utilitarians 
never  cease  to  claim  the  morality  of  self-devotion  as  a 
possession  which  belongs  by  as  good  a  right  to  them 
as  either  to  the  Stoic  or  to  the  Transcendentalist.  The 
utilitarian  morality  does  recognise  in  human  beings  the 
power  of  sacrificing  their  own  greatest  good  for  the  good 
of  others.  It  only  refuses  to  admit  that  the  sacrifice  is 
itself  a  good.  ...  As  between  his  own  happiness  and  that 
of  others,  utilitarianism  requires  him  [the  individual]  to 
be  as  strictly  impartial  as  a  disinterested  and  benevolent 
spectator.  In  the  golden  rule  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  we 
read  the  complete  spirit  of  the  ethics  of  utility.  To  do 
as  you  would  be  done  by,  and  to  love  your  neighbour 
as  yourself,  constitute  the  ideal  perfection  of  utilitarian 
morality.  ...  If  the  impugners  of  the  utilitarian  morality 
represented  it  to  their  minds  in  this  its  true  character, 
I  know  not  what  recommendation  possessed  by  any  other 
morality  they  could  possibly  affirm  to  be  wanting  to  it  ; 
what    more   beautiful  or   more   exalted   developments  of 

*  Ibid,,  ch,  iii. 


JOHN   STUART   MILL  257 

human  nature  any  other  ethical  system  can  be  supposed 
to  foster,  or  what  springs  of  action,  not  accessible  to  the 
utilitarian,  such  systems  rely  on  for  giving  effect  to  their 
mandates.'  ^ 

Yet  Mill  defines  Utilitarianism  in  Bentham's  familiar 
terms.  Y^he  creed  which  accepts  as  the  foundation  of\ 
morals,  Ixjlity,  or  the  Greatest  Happiness  Principle,  holds  | 
that  actions  are  right  in  proportion  as  they  tend  to  pro-  j 
mote  happiness,  wrong  as  they  tend  to  produce  the  rey 
verse  of  happiness.  By  happiness  is  intended  pleasjj*^ 
and  the  absence  of  pain  ;  by  unhappiness,  pain  and  the 
privation  of  pleasure.'  The  '  supplementary  explanations ' 
which  require  to  be  added  to  this  definition,  he  affirms, 
*  do  not  affect  the  theory  of  life  on  which  this  theory  of 
morality  is  grounded — namely,  that  pleasure  and  freedom 
from  pain  are  the  only  things  desirable  as  ends  ;  and  that 
all  desirable  things  (which  are  as  numerous  in  the  utili- 
tarian as  in  any  other  scheme)  are  desirable  either  for 
the  pleasure  inherent  in  themselves,  or  as  means  to 
the  promotion  of  pleasure  and  the  prevention  of  pain.' 2 
Moreover,  he  finds  the  *  proof  of  the  principle  of  utility 
in  Bentham's  theory  of  desire.  '  No  reason  can  be 
given  why  the  general  happiness  is  desirable,  except 
that  each  person,  so  far  as  he  believes  it  to  be  attainable, 
desires  his  own  happiness.'^  He  explains  the  desire  of 
other  things  as  either  the  desire  of  means  to  happiness 
or  the  desire  of  things  which,  formerly  desired  as  means, 
have  by  association  taken  the  place  of  the  end  itself.  He 
makes  no  attempt  to  reconcile  this  doctrine  of  psycho- 
logical hedonism  either  with  his  acknowledgment  of  the 
naturalness  of  sympathy  or  with  the  obligatoriness  of  the 
general  happiness  upon  the  individual. 

The  presence  of  these  fundamental  inconsistencies  in 
Mill's  ethical  theory  may  be  partly  explained  by  the  fact 
that  for  him,  as  well  as  for  Bentham,  the  *  principle  of 
Utility '  was  not  so  much  an  ethical  principle  as  a  method 

1   Uii/i/.,  ch.  ii.  ^  Loc.  cit.  »  Utilit.,  ch.  iv. 

R 


ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

social  and  political  reform,  and  that  the  principle  of 
individual  liberty  was  more  important,  in  his  eyes  as  well 
as  in  theirs,  than  that  of  utility.  *  It  is  plain,'  says  Pro- 
fessor Dicey,  *that  it  is  the  doctrine  of  laissez  faire  which 
has  really  governed  Benthamite  legislation.' ^  *  Though 
laissez  fairs  is  not  an  essential  part  of  utilitarianism  it 
was  practically  the  most  vital  part  of  Bentham's  legislative 
doctrine,  and  in  England  gave  to  the  movement  for  the 
reform  of  the  law,  both  its  powers  and  its  character.' ^ 
The  intensity  of  the  individualism  of  the  Utilitarians 
was  chiefly  due  to  their  conviction  that  the  great 
social  evil  was  the  predominance  of  class-interests  over 
national  interests  in  determining  the  action  of  Govern- 
ment. The  constant  object  of  their  attack  was  that '  sinister 
interest'  which,  in  one  form  or  another,  was  always 
asserting  itself  as  the  rival  of  the  true  interest  of  society 
and,  therefore,  of  the  individual.  It  was  because  the  only 
government  they  knew  was  a  government  vitiated  by  self- 
interest,  because  in  their  experience  *  a  political  trust  was 
habitually  confounded  with  private  property,'  ^  that  they 
found  it  necessary  to  defend  the  individual  from  govern- 
mental interference  with  his  interests.  The  representative 
and  democratic  form  of  government  does  not  save  it  from 
this  evil ;  lin  some  ways,  as  Mill  argues,  it  only  intensifies 
the  evil.  /MiU's  essay  on  Liberty  is  the  philosophical 
statement  of  this  Utilitarian  view  of  the  relation  of 
society  to  the  individual.  Professor  Dicey  says  that  it 
'  appeared,  to  thousands  of  admiring  disciples,  to  provide 
the  final  and  conclusive  demonstration  of  the  absolute 
truth  of  individualism,  and  to  establish  on  firm  ground 
the  doctrine  that  the  protection  of  freedom  was  the  one 
great  object  of  wise  law  and  sound  policy.'*  'Such 
phrases  as  "self-government"  and  "the  power  of  the 
people  over  themselves,"'  Mill  argues,  'do  not  express 
the  true  state  of  the  case.'     Even  in  a  democracy  it   is 

1  Law  and  Opinion  in  England,  p.  145,  note. 
"  Ibid.,  p.  146. 

'  Leslie  Stephen,  English  [Unitarians,  ii.  90. 
*  Law  and  Opinion  in  England,  p.  182. 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  259 

only  a  part  of  the  people,  the  majority,  that  really 
governs ;  and  the  '  tyranny  of  the  majority '  is  not  less 
real  than  that  of  the  individual  despot ;  it  may  well  be  an 
even  more  oppressive  form  of  tyranny,  since  it  is  social 
as  well  as  political,  '  penetrating  much  more  deephj— into 
the  details  of  life,  and  enslaving  the  soul  itselff  The 
inevitable  result  of  this  oppression  of  the  individual  by 
society  is  the  encouragement  of  mediocrity,  the  discourage- 
ment of  distinction.  'Those  whose  opinions  go  by  the 
name  of  public  opinion  are  not  always  the  same  sort  of 
public.  .  .  .  But  they  are  always  a  mass,  that  is  to  say, 
collective  mediocrity.' 

What,  then,  Mill  asks,  is  the  proper  limit  of  govern- 
mental interference  with  the  liberty  of  the  individual  ? 
'  The  sole  end,'  he  replies,  '  for  which  mankind  are 
warranted,  individually  or  collectively,  in  interfering  with 
the  liberty  of  action  of  any  of  their  number,  is  self-protec- 
tion. .  .  .  The  only  purpose  for  which  power  can  be 
rightfully  exercised  over  any  member  of  a  civilised  com- 
munity, against  his  will,  is  to  prevent  harm  to  others. 
His  own  good,  either  physical  or  moral,  is  not  a  sufficient 
warrant.  .  .  .  The  only  part  of  the  conduct  of  any  one, 
for  which  he  is  amenable  to  society,  is  that  which  con- 
cerns others.  In  the  part  which  merely  concerns  himself, 
his  independence  is,  of  right,  absolute.  Over  himself, 
over  his  own  body  and  mind,  the  individual  is  sovereign. 
.  .  ,  The  only  freedom  which  deserves  the  name,  is  that 
of  pursuing  our  own  good  in  our  own  way,  so  long  as  we 
do  not  attempt  to  deprive  others  of  theirs,  or  impede  their 
efforts  to  obtain  it.'  This  principle  follows.  Mill  argues, 
from  that  of 'Utility  in  the  largest  sense,  grounded  on  the 
permanent  interests  of  man  as  a  progressive  being.'  '  Man- 
kind are  greater  gainers  by  suffering  each  other  to  live  as 
seems  good  to  themselves,  than  by  compelling  each  to 
live  as  seems  good  to  the  rest.'  ^  The  individual,  as 
he  has  the  most  intimate  knowledge  of  his  own  good, 
is  also  the   best  judge  of  the  means  which  lead   to   it. 

^  Liberty,  Introd. 


26o         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Moreover,  'it  is  desirable  that  in  things  which  do  not 
primarily  concern  others,  individuality  should  assert  itself. 
Where,  not  the  person's  own  character,  but  the  traditions 
or  customs  of  other  people,  are  the  rules  of  conduct,  there 
is  wanting  one  of  the  chief  ingredients  of  human  happi- 
ness, and  quite  the  chief  ingredient  of  individual  and 
social  progress.'^  It  is  desirable,  in  the  interests  of  the 
general  well-being,  that  there  should  be  as  many  and  as 
varied  experiments  in  living  as  possible  ;  even  eccentricity 
is  better  than  the  dull  and  dead  uniformity  of  type  which 
is  encouraged  by  social  and  political  control  of  the  indi- 
vidual. Finally,  every  addition  to  the  functions  of  govern- 
ment constitutes  a  new  step  in  the  direction  of  bureaucracy, 
and  bureaucracy  is  the  grave  of  individuality. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  to  be  noted  that  there  is 
nothing  in  Mill's  theory  of  individual  liberty  to  invalidate 
the  increasing  interference  of  the  State  with  the  industrial 
liberty  of  the  individual!  and  we  know,  from  his  treatise 
on  Political  Economy^ especially  the  chapter  *  On  the 
Probable  Futurity  of  the  Labouring  Classes,')  ^  as  well  as 
from  his  Autobiography^  how  far  he  was  willing  to  go 
in  the  direction  of  Socialism  and  how  carefully  he 
sought  to  co-ordinate  economic  with  ethical  well-being, 
^ven  in  the  essay  on  Liberty  he  protests  against  'mis- 
applied notions  of  liberty,'  as  '  a  real  obstacle  to  the  fulfil- 
ment by  the  State  of  its  duties,'  and  affirms  that  '  the 
State,  while  it  respects  the  liberty  of  each  in  what  specially 
regards  himself,  is  bound  to  maintain  a  vigilant  control 
over  his  exercise  of  any  power  which  it  allows  him  to 
possess  over  otl^ers\  As  regards  the  State's  interference 
with  the  industnali  life,  in  particular,  he  insists  upon 
the  distinction  between  economic  and  moral  freedom. 
*  Restrictions  on  trade,  or  on  production  for  purposes  of 
trade,  are  indeed  restraints  ;  and  all  restraint,  qud  restraint, 
is  an  evil :  but  the  restraints  in  question  affect  only  that 
part  of  conduct  which  society  is  competent  to  restrain.  .  .  . 
As  the  principle  of  individual  liberty  is  not  involved  in  the 

*  Liberty,  ch.  iii.  •  Polit.  Econ.,  bk.  iv.  ch.  vii. 


JOHN   STUART   MILL  261 

doctrine  of  Free  Trade,  so  neither  is  it  in  most  of  the 
questions  which  arise  respecting  the  h'mits  of  that  doc- 
trine :  as,  for  example  .  .  .  how  far  sanitary  precautions, 
or  arrangements  to  protect  work-people  employed  in 
dangerous  occupations,  should  be  enforced  on  employers. 
Such  questions  involve  considerations  of  liberty,  only  in  so 
far  as  leaving  people  to  themselves  is  always  better,  caeteris 
paribus^  than  controlling  them  :  but  that  they  may  be 
legitimately  controlled  for  these  ends,  is  in  principle  unde- 
niable.'^ As  for  the  'liberty  of  combination,'  which  was 
one  of  the  burning  questions  of  the  time,  he  regards  it  as 
so  far  from  contradicting  the  doctrine  of  individual  liberty 
that  it  is  the  corollary  of  that  doctrine.  *  From  this 
liberty  of  each  individual,  follows  the  liberty,  within  the 
same  limits,  of  combination  among  individuals  ;  freedom 
to  unite,  for  any  purpose  not  involving  harm  to  others  : 
the  persons  combining  being  supposed  to  be  of  full  age, 
and  not  forced  or  deceived.'  ^ 

Lord  Morley  has  remarked  of  Mill  that  he  '  recognised 
the  social  destination  of  knowledge,  and  kept  the  elevation 
of  the  great  art  of  social  existence  ever  before  him,  as  the 
ultimate  end  of  all  speculative  activity.'  ^  This  conviction 
of  the  practical  significance  of  philosophy  finds  expression 
more  than  once  in  Mill's  own  works.  '  Speculative 
philosophy,'  he  says,  '  which  to  the  superficial  appears  a 
thing  so  remote  from  the  business  of  life  and  the  outward 
interests  of  men,  is  in  reality  the  thing  on  earth  which 
most  influences  them,  and  in  the  long  run  overbears  every 
other  influence  save  those  which  it  must  itself  obey.'  * 
The  difference  between  Intuitionism  and  Empiricism  is, 
as  he  understands  it,  practical  as  well  as  theoretical ;  and 
it  was  the  practical  aspect  of  the  controversy  that  chiefly 
interested  him,  and  that  prompted  him  to  write  the  Logic. 
*The  System  of  Logic  supplies  what  was  much  wanted, 
a  text-book  of  the  opposite  doctrine  [to  the  "  German,  or 
a  priori  view  of  human  knowledge,  and  of  the  knowing 

^  Liberty,  ch.  v.  *  Ibid,,  Introd. 

'  Critical  Miscellanies,  iii.  42.  *  Dissertations,  i.  330. 


262  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

faculties "] — that   which    derives  all  knowledge  from  ex- 
perience, and  all  moral  and  intellectual  qualities  principally 
from    the    direction    given  to  the  associations.  .  .  .  The 
notion  that  truths  external  to  the  mind  may  be  known  by 
intuition  or   consciousness,    independently  of  observation 
and    experience,  is,  I  am  persuaded,  in  these  times,  the 
great   intellectual  support  of  false  doctrines  and  bad  in- 
stitutions.    By  the  aid  of  this  theory,   every  inveterate 
/  belief  and  every  intense  feeling,  of  which  the  origin  is  not 
\  remembered,  is  enabled  to  dispense  with  the  obligation  of 
justifying  itself  by  reason,  and  is  erected  into  its  own  all- 
sufficient  voucher  and  justification.      There    never   was 
such    an    instrument  devised    for    consecrating   all   deep- 
I seated  prejudices.'^ 

Empiricism  is  *  the  doctrine  of  the  school  of  Locke  and 
of  Bentham,'  as  opposed  to  that  of  German  Transcenden- 
talism and  Scottish  Intuitionism  ;  and  Mill  is  convinced 
that  the  truth  lies  with  the  former  type  of  philosophical 
theory.  *  We  see  no  ground  for  believing  that  anything 
can  be  the  object  of  our  knowledge  except  our  experience, 
and  what  can  be  inferred  from  our  experience  by  the 
analogies  of  experience  itself ;  nor  that  there  is  any  idea, 
feeling,  or  power  in  the  human  mind,  which,  in  order  to 
account  for  it,  requires  that  its  origin  should  be  referred 
to  any  other  source.'  ^  Yet  the  Transcendentalists  have 
performed  the  important  service  of  compelling  that 
'  entire  renovation '  of  which  the  Lockian  doctrine  stood 
in  need.  *It  perhaps  required  all  the  violence  of  the 
assaults  made  by  Reid  and  the  German  school  upon 
Locke's  system,  to  recall  men's  minds  to  Hartley's 
principles,  as  alone  adequate  to  the  solution,  upon  that 
system,  of  the  peculiar  difficulties  which  those  assailants 
pressed  upon  men's  attention  as  altogether  insoluble  by 
it.'  ^  The  repudiation  of  the  shallow  doctrine  of  French 
Ideology,  that  corrupt  version  of  the  Lockian  tradition, 
was  *  the  first  sign  that  the  age  of  real  psychology 
was   about    to  commence.'  *     In    his   Autobiography  Mill 

*  Autobiog.,  p.  225.  *  Dissertations,  i.  409. 

'  Ibid.,  i.  412.  *  Ibid.,  i.  411. 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  263 

speaks  of  '  analytic  psychology '  as  '  that  most  impor- 
tant branch  of  speculation,  on  which  all  the  moral 
and  political  sciences  ultimately  rest.'  ^  As  his  aim  in 
ethics  is  to  develop  the  implications  of  the  principle  of 
Utility,  his  purpose  in  the  discussion  of  the  wider 
questions  of  general  philosophy  is  to  develop  and  apply 
the  principle  of  Association,  the  principle  of  Hartley,  as 
modified  by  his  father  in  the  Analysis.  The  result  is 
seen  in  the  System  of  Logic  and  the  Examination  of  Sir 
William  Hamilton's  Philosophy^  the  former  published  in 
1843,  the  latter  in   1865. 

The  Logic  is  Mill's  only  systematic  treatise  in  philo- 
sophy ;  and  apart  from  its  speculative  interest,  it  is  a 
work  of  epoch-making  importance  in  logical  theory.  HofF-  S 
ding's  estimate  is  hardly  exaggerated  when  he  says  that'i 
*  it  is  not  easy  to  find  a  parallel  to  this  work  unless  we  go 
back  to  Aristotle  ;  what  the  latter  did  for  the  syllogism  , 
and  for  deductive  logic.  Mill  has  done  for  induction, 
for  the  logic  of  experimental  science.'  ^  As  Aristotle 
reduced  to  rule  the  procedure  of  the  Socratic  and  Platonic 
dialectic.  Mill  has  formulated  the  methods  underlying 
and  regulating  the  procedure  of  modern  science. 
As  the  Aristotelian  logic  states  the  methods  of  argu- 
mentation, Mill's  logic  states  the  methods  of  experi- 
mentation. The  great  merit  of  Mill,  as  compared  with 
Bacon,  his  only  important  predecessor  in  this  field,  is  that 
he  appreciates  the  value  of  the  deductive  method  as  an 
indispensable  element  in  the  complete  method  of  science. 
While  he  insists,  no  less  emphatically  than  Bacon,  upon 
the  inductive  basis  of  all  scientific  explanation,  he  sees 
the  limitation  of  an  induction  which  is  not  supplemented 
by  deduction.  If  Bacon's  repudiation  of  the  deduc- 
tive method  was  necessary  as  a  protest  against  the 
empty  argumentation  of  Scholastic  philosophy,  the  lesson 
needed  by  the  modern  scientific  mind  is  that  the 
complete  scientific  method  is  deductive  as  well  as  in- 
ductive, and  that  the  ideal  of  scientific  explanation  is  the 

^  Autobiog.,  p.  204. 

*  Einleitutig  in  die  englische  Philosophic  unserer  Zeit,  p.  33. 


264         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

combination  of  induction  and  deduction,  of  analysis  and 
synthesis. 

The  aim  of  all  scientific  investigation  being  the  dis- 
covery of  the  causal  relations  of  phenomena,  and  the  cause 
being  the  unconditional  antecedent — that  condition,  or 
sum  of  conditions,  whose  presence  is  followed  by  the 
presence  of  the  consequent  and  whose  absence  is  followed 
by  the  absence  of  the  consequent,  what  is  needed  is  some 
clear  guide  to  the  detection  of  these  causal  relations. 
Mill  formulates  five  such  guiding  methods — the  method  of 
agreement,  that  of  difference,  the  joint  or  double  method 
of  agreement  and  difference,  the  method  of  residues,  and 
that  of  concomitant  variations.  The  common  feature  of 
these  methods — the  one  real  method  of  scientific  inquiry 
— is,  as  Taine  points  out,  that  of  elimination.^  All  the 
other  methods  are  thus  subordinate  to  the  method  of 
difference.  Here  we  have  a  case  of  the  occurrence  of  the 
phenomenon  under  investigation  and  a  case  of  its  non- 
occurrence, these  cases  having  every  circumstance  in 
common  save  one,  that  one  occurring  only  in  the  former  ; 
and  we  are  warranted  in  concluding  that  this  circumstance, 
in  which  alone  the  two  cases  differ,  is  either  the  cause  or 
a  necessary  part  of  the  cause  of  the  phenomenon. 

It  is  only  in  the  simpler  cases  of  causal  connexion,  how- 
ever, that  we  can  apply  these  direct  methods  of  observation 
and  experiment.  In  the  more  complex  cases  we  have  to 
employ  the  *  deductive  method,'  which  consists  of  three 
operations — induction,  ratiocination  or  deduction,  and 
verification.  *  To  the  Deductive  Method,  thus  charac- 
terised in  its  three  constituent  parts — Induction,  Ratio- 
cination, and  Verification — the  human  mind  is  indebted 
for  its  most  conspicuous  triumphs  in  the  investigation  of 
nature.  To  it  we  owe  all  the  theories  by  which  vast  and 
complicated  phenomena  are  embraced  under  a  few  simple 
laws,  which,  considered  as  the  laws  of  those  great  pheno- 
mena, could  never  have  been  detected  by  their  direct 
study.'  ^     We  deduce  the  law  or  cause  of  a  complex  effect 

^  Le  positivisme  anglais,  Eng.  trans. ,  p.  58. 
•  Logic,  bk.  iii.  ch.  xi.  sect.  3. 


JOHN  [STUART   MILL  265 

from  the  laws  of  the  separate  causes  whose  concurrence 
gives  rise  to  it.  For  example,  'the  mechanical  and 
chemical  laws  of  the  solid  and  fluid  substances  composing 
the  organised  body  and  the  medium  in  which  it  subsists, 
together  with  the  peculiar  vital  laws  of  the  different 
tissues  constituting  the  organic  structure,'  aflford  the  clue 
to  *  the  laws  on  which  the  phenomena  of  life  depend.'  ^ 
But  these  '  laws  of  the  different  causes '  must  first  be 
ascertained  by  direct  induction,  and  finally  verified,  as 
the  causes  actually  operative  in  the  complex  effect,  by 
comparison  with  the  facts  of  the  case.  Thus  the  entire 
process  is  based  on  induction.  'To  warrant  reliance 
on  the  general  conclusions  arrived  at  by  deduction,  these 
conclusions  must  be  found,  on  careful  comparison,  to 
accord  with  the  results  of  direct  observation  wherever  it 
can  be  had.  .  .  .  Thus  it  was  very  reasonably  deemed  an 
essential  requisite  of  any  true  theory  of  the  causes  of 
the  celestial  motions,  that  it  should  lead  by  deduction 
to  Kepler's  laws ;  which,  accordingly,  the  Newtonian 
theory  did.'  ^ 

The  validity  of  the  entire  inductive  process  is  thus 
clearly  seen  to  depend  upon  the  validity  of  its  underlying 
assumption,  the  law  of  causation  itself.  Assuming  that 
every  phenomenon  has  a  cause,  or  invariable  and  un- 
conditional antecedent,  we  investigate  the  problem  of 
causation  in  detail.  Is  this  fundamental  assumption  itself 
valid  ?  Mill  cannot  avail  himself  of  the  theory  that  the  ; 
'  law  of  universal  causation  '  is  an  intuition  of  reason  or  • 
an  a  priori  and  transcendental  principle.  For  him  the 
only  possible  view  is  that  '  the  belief  we  entertain  in  the 
universality,  throughout  nature,  of  the  law  of  cause  and 
effect,  is  itself  an  instance  of  induction.  .  .  .  We  arrive 
at  this  universal  law  by  generalisation  from  many  laws  of 
inferior  generality.  We  should  never  have  had  the  notion 
of  causation  (in  the  philosophical  meaning  of  the  term)  as 
a  condition  of  all  phenomena,  unless  many  cases  of  causa- 
tion,  or,   in   other  words,   many   partial   uniformities  of 

1  Logic,  III.  xi.  I.  «  Ibid.,  III.  xi.  3. 


266  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

sequence,  had  previously  become  familiar.  The  more 
obvious  of  the  particular  uniformities  suggest,  and  give 
evidence  of,  the  general  uniformity,  and  the  general 
uniformity,  once  established,  enables  us  to  prove  the 
remainder  of  the  particular  uniformities  of  w^hich  it  is 
made  up.'^  These  early  inductions,  vj^hich  result  in 
the  lav^^  of  universal  causation,  cannot  belong  to  the  same 
type  as  those  rigorous  inductions  w^hich  conform  to  the 
canons  of  scientific  induction  and  presuppose  the  law  of 
universal  causation ;  they  belong  to  *  the  loose  and 
uncertain  mode  of  induction  per  enumerationem  stmplicem.^ 
How,  then,  can  a  process  whose  basis  is  thus  loose  and 
uncertain  have  any  certain  validity  ?  Mill's  answer  is 
that  induction  by  simple  enumeration,  or  '  generalisation 
of  an  observed  fact  from  the  mere  absence  of  any  known 
instance  to  the  contrary,'  as  contrasted  with  the  critical 
induction  of  science,  is  a  valid,  though  a  fallible  process, 
which  must  precede  the  less  fallible  forms  of  the  inductive 
process,  and  that  '  the  precariousness  of  the  method  of 
simple  enumeration  is  in  an  inverse  ratio  to  the  largeness 
of  the  generalisation.'  'As  the  sphere  widens,  this  un- 
scientific method  becomes  less  and  less  liable  to  mislead  ; 
and  the  most  universal  class  of  truths,  the  law  of  causation, 
for  instance,  and  the  principles  of  number  and  geometry, 
are  duly  and  satisfactorily  proved  by  that  method  alone, 
nor  are  they  susceptible  of  any  other  proof.' ^ 

The  universality  of  the  law  of  causation,  as  it  is  an 
induction  from  our  experience,  does  not  extend  to  *  circum- 
stances unknown  to  us,  and  beyond  the  possible  range  of 
our  experience.'  *  In  distant  parts  of  the  stellar  regions, 
where  the  phenomena  may  be  entirely  unlike  those  with 
which  we  are  acquainted,  it  would  be  folly  to  affirm  con- 
fidently that  this  general  law  prevails,  any  more  than  those 
special  ones  which  we  have  found  to  hold  universally  on 
our  own  planet.  The  uniformity  in  the  succession  of 
events,  otherwise  called  the  law  of  causation,  must  be 
received,  not  as  a  law  of  the  universe,  but  of  that  portion  of 

1  Logic,  III.  xxi.  2.  2  //i,v/,^  III.  xxi.  3. 


JOHN   STUART   MILL  267 

it  only  which  is  within  the  range  of  our  means  of  sure 
observation,  with  a  reasonable  degree  of  extension  to 
adjacent  cases.  To  extend  it  further  is  to  make  a  supposi- 
tion without  evidence,  and  to  which,  in  the  absence  of 
any  ground  from  experience  for  estimating  its  degree  of 
probability,  it  would  be  idle  to  attempt  to  assign  any.'^ 
There  is  no  difficulty  in  conceiving  *  that  in  some 
one,  for  instance,  of  the  many  firmaments  into  which 
sidereal  astronomy  now  divides  the  universe,  events  may 
succeed  one  another  at  random  without  any  fixed  law  ; 
nor  can  anything  in  our  experience,  or  in  our  mental 
nature,  constitute  a  sufficient,  or  indeed  any,  reason  for 
believing  that  this  is  nowhere  the  case.'  ^ 

The  appearance  of  paradox  in  the  view  that  the  law  of 
causation  is  at  once  the  presupposition  and  the  result  of 
induction  disappears,  according  to  Mill,  with  'the  old 
theory  of  reasoning,  which  supposes  the  universal  truth, 
or  major  premise,  in  a  ratiocination,  to  be  the  real  proof 
of  the  particular  truths  which  are  ostensibly  inferred 
from  it.'  ^  His  own  view  is  that  '  the  major  premise 
is  not  the  proof  of  the  conclusion,  but  is  itself  proved, 
along  with  the  conclusion,  from  the  same  evidence.' 
The  old  theory  implies  that  the  syllogism  is  a  petitio 
principiij  since  the  conclusion  which  is  supposed  to  be 
proved  is  already  contained  in  the  major  premise  ;  if  we 
know  that  'all  men  are  mortal,'  we  know,  and  do  not 
require  to  prove,  that  '  Socrates  is  mortal.'  '  No  reasoning 
from  generals  to  particulars  can,  as  such,  prove  anything, 
since  from  a  general  principle  we  cannot  infer  any 
particulars,  but  those  which  the  principle  itself  assumes 
as  known.'  *  The  only  use  of  the  syllogism  is  to  con- 
vict your  opponent  of  inconsistency  ;  it  cannot  lead  us 
from  the  known  to  the  unknown.  In  reality  the  major 
premise  is  a  register  of  previous  inductions  and  a  short 
formula  for  making  more.  'The  conclusion  is  not  an 
inference  drawn  from  the  formula,  but  an  inference  drawn 
according  to    the    formula ;    the    real    logical    antecedent 

1  Logic,  III.  xxi.  4.  ■  Jh'd.,  III.  xxi.  i. 

»  /iid.,  III.  xxi.  4.  *  find.,  II.  ui.  2. 


268  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

or  premise  being  the  particular  facts  from  which  the 
general  proposition  was  collected  by  induction.'^  The 
major  premise  is  merely  a  shorthand  note,  to  assist  the 
memory.  *The  inference  is  finished  when  we  have  as- 
serted that  all  men  are  mortal.  What  remains  to  be  per- 
formed afterwards  is  merely  deciphering  our  own  notes.' 
The  mistake  of  the  traditional  view  is  'that  of  referring  a 
person  to  his  own  notes  for  the  origin  of  his  knowledge. 
If  a  person  is  asked  a  question,  and  is  at  the  moment 
unable  to  answer  it,  he  may  refresh  his  memory  by  turning 
to  a  memorandum  which  he  carries  about  with  him.  But 
if  he  were  asked,  how  the  fact  came  to  his  knowledge, 
he  would  scarcely  answer,  because  it  was  set  down  in 
his  notebook :  unless  the  book  was  written,  like  the 
Koran,  with  a  quill  from  the  wing  of  the  angel  Gabriel.'  ^ 
All  inference  is  from  particulars  to  particulars;  the 
syllogistic  process  is  only  an  interpretation  of  our  notes 
of  previous  inferences.  'If  we  had  sufficiently  capacious 
memories,  and  a  sufficient  power  of  maintaining  order 
among  a  huge  mass  of  details,  the  reasoning  could  go  on 
without  any  general  propositions  ;  they  are  mere  formulae 
for  inferring  particulars  from  particulars.'^ 

Syllogistic  reasoning  is  thus  a  circuitous  way  of  reaching 
a  conclusion  which  might  have  been  reached  directly, 
like  going  up  a  hill  and  down  again  when  we  might 
have  travelled  along  the  level  road.  There  is  no  reason 
why  we  should  be  compelled  to  take  the  '  high  priori 
road '  except  '  the  arbitrary  fiat  of  logicians.'  '  Not  only 
may  we  reason  from  particulars  to  particulars  without 
passing  through  generals,  but  we  perpetually  do  so 
reason.  All  our  earliest  inferences  are  of  this  nature.'* 
Mill,  however,  acknowledges  '  the  immense  advantage, 
in  point  of  security  for  correctness,  which  is  gained  by 
interposing  this  step  between  the  real  evidence  and  the 
conclusion,'  the  importance  of  'the  appeal  to  former 
experience  in  the  major  premise  of  the  syllogism.'* 
When  we   say  that  Socrates  is   mortal,  because  he  is  a 

1  Logic,  II.  iii.  4.  «  Ibid.,  III.  Jii.  3.  8  Ibid.,  III.  iv.  3. 

*  Ibid,  II.  iii.  3.  »  Ibid.,  II.  iii.  6. 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  269 

man,  and  all  men  are  mortal,  we  assert  that  because  he 
resembles  the  other  individuals  in  the  attributes  connoted 
by  the  term  man,  he  resembles  them  further  in  the 
attribute  mortality.  *  Whether,  from  the  attributes  in 
which  Socrates  resembles  those  men  who  have  heretofore 
died,  it  is  allowable  to  infer  that  he  resembles  them  also 
in  being  mortal,  is  a  question  of  Induction.'^  The 
major  premise  is  the  record  and  reminder  that  we  have 
made  that  induction,  and  are  therefore  not  merely 
warranted,  but  required,  to  apply  it  in  the  particular  case 
before  us. 

*  The  chief  strength  of  this  false  philosophy  [intuitionism] 
in  morals,  politics,  and  religion,'  Mill  remarks  in  his 
Autobiography^  Mies  in  the  appeal  which  it  is  accustomed 
to  make  to  the  evidence  of  mathematics  and  of  the 
cognate  branches  of  physical  science.  To  expel  it  from 
these,  is  to  drive  it  from  its  stronghold  :  and  because  this 
had  never  been  effectually  done,  the  intuitive  school,  even 
after  what  my  father  had  written  in  his  Analysis  of 
the  Mind,  had  in  appearance,  and  as  far  as  published 
writings  were  concerned,  on  the  whole  the  best  of  the 
argument.  In  attempting  to  clear  up  the  real  nature 
of  the  evidence  of  mathematical  and  physical  truths, 
the  "  System  of  Logic  "  met  the  intuitive  philosophers  on 
ground  on  which  they  had  previously  been  deemed  un- 
assailable ;  and  gave  its  own  explanation,  from  experience 
and  association,  of  that  peculiar  character  of  what  are 
called  necessary  truths,  which  is  adduced  as  proof  that 
their  evidence  must  come  from  a  deeper  source  than 
experience.'  ^  The  peculiar  certainty  and  necessity  attri- 
buted to  these  truths  is,  he  argues,  'an  illusion,  in  order 
to  sustain  which,  it  is  necessary  to  suppose  that  those 
truths  relate  to,  and  express  the  properties  of  purely 
imaginary  objects.'  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  truths  of 
geometry  do  not  hold,  except  approximately,  of  the  real 
world,  but  only  of  that  imaginary  world  which  cor- 
responds  to   its   initial  definitions.      The    truth    is   that 

^  Logic,  II.  iii.  7.  *  Autobiog.,  p.  226, 


270         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

geometry  *  is  built  on  hypotheses ;  that  it  owes  to  this 
alone  the  peculiar  certainty  supposed  to  distinguish  it  ; 
and  that  in  any  science  whatever,  by  reasoning  from 
a  set  of  hypotheses,  we  may  obtain  a  body  of  conclusions 
as  certain  as  those  of  geometry,  that  is,  as  strictly  in 
accordance  with  the  hypotheses,  and  as  irresistibly  com- 
pelling assent,  on  condition  that  those  hypotheses  are 
true.'^  As  for  the  axioms  which,  together  with' the 
definitions,  form  the  basis  of  geometrical  reasoning,  they 
are  in  reality  '  experimental  truths,  generalisations  from 
observation.'  The  great  argument  for  their  a  priori 
character  is  that  their  opposites  are  inconceivable.  But 
conceivability  *  has  very  little  to  do  with  the  possibility 
of  the  thing  in  itself,  but  is  in  truth  very  much  an 
affair  of  accident,  and  depends  on  the  past  history  and 
habits  of  our  own  minds.'  2  It  is  the  effect  of  habitual 
association,  itself  the  result  of  our  earliest  and  most 
widely  based  inductions  from  experience ;  it  is  an  ac- 
quired incapacity  which  can  hardly  but  be  mistaken  for  a 
natural  one,  an  experimental  truth  which  can  hardly  but 
be  mistaken  for  a  necessary  one. 

It  is  in  the  application  of  the  inductive  and  psychological 
method  to  social  and  political  problems  that  Mill  sees 
the  crowning  achievement  of  scientific  investigation. 
This  application  has  yet  to  be  made  ;  the  *  Germano- 
Coleridgian  school '  were  *  the  first  (except  a  solitary 
thinker  here  and  there)  who  inquired  with  any  compre- 
hensiveness or  depth,  into  the  inductive  laws  of  the 
existence  and  growth  of  human  society.'  ^  To  the  con- 
sideration of  this  new  science  of  *  Ethology,'  or  the 
study  of  the  causes  influencing  the  formation  of  national 
character,  the  final  book  of  the  Logic  is  devoted.  In 
thus  seeking  to  inaugurate  a  scientific  Sociology,  Mill 
was  undoubtedly  influenced  by  Comte,  but  he  was  also 
proceeding  on  the  familiar  lines  of  the  Utilitarians, 
who  always  regarded  character  as  the  product  of  circum- 
stances, and  looked  to  education  to  effect  the  transition 

*  Logic,  II.  V.  I.  •  Ibid.,  II,  v.  6.  •  Dissertations,  i.  425, 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  271 

from  the  present  unsatisfactory  state  of  things  to  one 
more  in  accordance  with  their  social  ideal.  The  in- 
definite modifiability  of  human  nature  by  circumstances 
is  the  working  hypothesis  of  the  school ;  all  that  Mill  adds 
is  the  demand  that  social  life  be  conducted  on  scientific 
principles.  It  is  significant  that  Mill  finally  abandoned 
the  intention  to  construct  the  scheme  of  such  a  science, 
and  devoted  his  energies  to  the  writing  of  his  Political 
Economy^  published  five  years  after  the  Logic^  in  1848.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  reconcile  the  view  of  the  growth 
of  character  implied  in  the  desiderated  '  Ethology '  with 
his  insistence  upon  the  importance  of  individuality,  and 
his  protest  against  the  interference  of  society  with  the 
liberty  of  the  individual,  in  the  essay  on  Liberty,  published 
in  1859. 

Mill's  only  other  work  in  general  philosophy  is  the 
Examination  of  Sir  William  Hamilton's  Philosophy^  pub- 
lished in  1865.  'I  mean  in  this  book,'  he  writes  to 
Bain,  *  to  do  what  the  nature  and  scope  of  the  "  Logic  " 
forbade  me  to  do  there,  to  face  the  ultimate  meta- 
physical difficulties  of  every  question  on  which  I  touch.'  ^ 
The  discussion  of  Hamilton's  philosophy  was  intended, 
as  we  learn  from  the  Autobiography^  to  be  made  the 
occasion  of  a  thorough-going  examination  of  the  rival 
philosophies  of  Intuitionism  and  Empiricism,  the  con- 
troversy between  which  had,  in  Mill's  eyes,  as  we 
have  already  seen,  the  utmost  practical  and  social  signifi- 
cance. 'The  difference  between  these  two  schools  of 
philosophy,  that  of  Intuition,  and  that  of  Experience 
and  Association,  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  abstract  specu- 
lation ;  it  is  full  of  practical  consequences,  and  lies  at 
the  foundation  of  all  the  greatest  differences  of  practical 
opinion  in  an  age  of  progress.  The  practical  reformer 
has  continually  to  demand  that  changes  be  made  in 
things  which  are  supported  by  powerful  and  widely-spread 
feelings,  or  to  question  the  apparent  necessity  and  inde- 

*  Letters,  i.  271. 


272  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

feasibleness  of  established  facts ;  and  it  is  often  an  indis- 
pensable part  of  his  argument  to  show  how  those  powerful 
feelings  had  their  origin,  and  how  those  facts  came 
to  seem  necessary  and  indefeasible.  There  is  therefore 
a  natural  hostility  between  him  and  a  philosophy  which 
discourages  the  explanation  of  feelings  and  moral  facts 
by  circumstances  and  association,  and  prefers  to  treat 
them  as  ultimate  elements  of  human  nature  ;  a  philosophy 
which  is  addicted  to  holding  up  favourite  doctrines  as 
intuitive  truths,  and  deems  intuition  to  be  the  voice 
of  Nature  and  of  God,  speaking  with  an  authority  higher 
than  that  of  our  reason.  In  particular,  I  have  long 
felt  that  the  prevailing  tendency  to  regard  all  the  marked 
distinctions  of  human  character  as  innate,  and  in  the 
main  indelible,  and  to  ignore  the  irresistible  proofs  that 
by  far  the  greater  part  of  those  differences,  whether 
between  individuals,  races,  or  sexes,  are  such  as  not 
only  might  but  naturally  would  be  produced  by  differences 
in  circumstances,  is  one  of  the  chief  hindrances  to  the 
rational  treatment  of  great  social  questions,  and  one  of 
the  greatest  stumbling  blocks  to  human  improvement.' 
It  was  necessary,  therefore,  to  determine  the  issue  between 
these  two  philosophies.  The  pretensions  of  Intuitionism 
had  received  a  series  of  salutary  checks  by  the  publication 
of  the  elder  Mill's  Analysis^  of  Mill's  own  Logic^  and  of 
*  Professor  Bain's  great  treatise.'  *  But  I  had  for  some 
time  felt  that  the  mere  contrast  of  the  two  philosophies 
was  not  enough,  that  there  ought  to  be  a  hand-to-hand 
fight  between  them,  that  controversial  as  well  as  expository 
writings  were  needed,  and  that  the  time  was  come  when 
such  controversy  would  be  useful.  Considering  then 
the  writings  and  fame  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  as  the  great 
fortress  of  the  intuitional  philosophy  in  this  country,  a 
fortress  the  more  formidable  from  the  imposing  character, 
and  the  in  many  respects  great  personal  merits  and  mental 
endowments,  of  the  man,  I  thought  it  might  be  a  real 
service  to  philosophy  to  attempt  a  thorough  examination 
of  all  his  most  important  doctrines,  and  an  estimate 
of  his  general  claims  to  eminence  as  a  philosopher.'    This 


JOHN   STUART   MILL  273 

resolution  was  confirmed  by  the  *  profoundly  immoral ' 
view  of  religion  which  had  been  deduced  by  Mansel 
from  the  Hamiltonian  doctrine  of  Relativity.^ 

It  is  unnecessary  to  follow  this  hand-to-hand  encounter 
in  detail.  It  shows  Mill  at  his  best,  but  does  not  add 
materially  to  the  statement  of  his  own  position  already 
given  in  the  Logic.  The  only  important  addition  is  the 
application  of  the  '  psychological  theory '  to  our  belief  in 
an  External  World  and  in  Mind.  As  regards  the  former, 
Mill  elaborates  his  famous  view  of  the  External  World 
as  *a  Permanent  Possibility  of  Sensation.' 2  ^5  re- 
gards the  latter,  he  elaborates  the  view  of  the  Self 
already  referred  to,  as  stated  more  briefly  in  the  Notes  to 
the  Analysis^  published  three  years  later.  'If  we  speak 
of  the  Mind  as  a  series  of  feelings,  we  are  obliged  to 
complete  the  statement  by  calling  it  a  series  of  feelings 
which  is  aware  of  itself  as  past  and  future  ;  and  we  are 
reduced  to  the  alternative  of  believing  that  the  Mind,  or 
Ego,  is  something  different  from  any  series  of  feelings,  or 
possibilities  of  them,  or  of  accepting  the  paradox,  that 
something  which  ex  hypothesi  is  but  a  series  of  feelings,  can 
be  aware  of  itself  as  a  series.  The  truth  is,  that  we  are 
here  face  to  face  with  that  final  inexplicability,  at  which, 
as  Sir  W.  Hamilton  observes,  we  inevitably  arrive  when 
we  reach  ultimate  facts ;  and  in  general,  one  mode  of 
stating  it  only  appears  more  incomprehensible  than 
another,  because  the  whole  of  human  language  is  accom- 
modated to  the  one,  and  is  so  incongruous  with  the  other, 
that  it  cannot  be  expressed  in  any  terms  which  do  not 
deny  its  truth.  The  real  stumbling  block  is  perhaps  not 
in  any  theory  of  the  fact,  but  in  the  fact  itself.  ...  I 
think,  by  far  the  wisest  thing  we  can  do,  is  to  accept  the 
inexplicable  fact,  without  any  theory  of  how  it  takes 
place  ;  and  when  we  are  obliged  to  speak  of  it  in  terms 
which  assume  a  theory,  to  use  them  with  a  reservation  as 
to  their  meaning.'  *  In  the  Appendix  to  Chapters  XI. 
and  XII.   he  speaks  more  positively  of  the  Self.     'The 

^  Autobiog.,  pp.  273-275.        *  Examination,  ch.  xi.      *  Ibid.,  p.  248. 

S 


274         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

inexplicable  tie,  or  law,  the  organic  union  (as  Professor 
Masson  calls  it)  which  connects  the  present  consciousness 
with  the  past  one,  of  which  it  reminds  me,  is  as  near  as  I 
think  we  can  get  to  a  positive  conception  of  the  Self. 
That  there  is  something  real  in  this  tie,  real  as  the  sensa- 
tions themselves,  and  not  a  mere  product  of  the  laws  of 
thought  without  any  fact  corresponding  to  it,  I  hold  to  be 
indubitable.  .  .  .  This  original  element,  which  has  no 
community  of  nature  with  any  of  the  things  answering  to 
our  names,  and  to  which  we  cannot  give  any  name  but 
its  own  peculiar  one  without  implying  some  false  or 
unguarded  theory,  is  the  Ego,  or  Self.  As  such,  I  ascribe 
a  reality  to  the  Ego — to  my  own  Mind — different  from 
that  real  existence  as  a  Permanent  Possibility,  which  is 
the  only  reality  I  acknowledge  in  Matter  :  and  by  fair 
experiential  inference  from  that  one  Ego,  I  ascribe  the 
same  reality  to  other  Egoes,  or  Minds.  .  .  .  We  are  forced 
to  apprehend  every  part  of  the  series  as  linked  with  the 
other  parts  by  something  in  common,  which  is  not  the 
feelings  themselves,  any  more  than  the  succession  of  the 
feelings  is  the  feelings  themselves  :  and  as  that  which  is 
the  same  in  the  first  as  in  the  second,  in  the  second  as  in 
the  third,  in  the  third  as  in  the  fourth,  and  so  on,  must 
be  the  same  in  the  first  and  in  the  fiftieth,  this  common 
element  is  a  permanent  element.'^ 

The  posthumously  published  volume  of  Essays  on  Religion 
contains  three  essays — on  Nature,  the  Utility  of  Religion, 
and  Theism.  The  first  and  second  were  written  between 
1850  and  1858,  that  is,  during  the  same  period  as  the 
essays  on  Utilitarianism  and  on  Liberty,  while  the  third 
belongs  to  a  much  later  time,  having  been  written  between 
1868  and  1870,  and  is  thus  'the  last  considerable  work 
which  he  completed,'  and  *  shows  the  latest  state  of  the 
Author's  mind,  the  carefully  balanced  result  of  the 
deliberations  of  a  lifetime.'  2 

The  first  essay  is  a  protest  against  the  view  that  the  ideal 

^  Examination,  pp.  262,  263.        *  Essays  on  Religion,  Pre&ce. 


JOHN  STUART   MILL  275 

of  human  conduct  is  found  in  conformity  to  Nature.  It 
reminds  us  of  Huxley's  later  condemnation,  in  his  famous 
Romanes  lecture  on  *  Evolution  and  Ethics,'  of  the  cosmic 
process  from  the  ethical  point  of  view.  'In  sober  truth, 
nearly  all  the  things  which  men  are  hanged  or  imprisoned 
for  doing  to  one  another,  are  nature's  every  day  perform- 
ances.'^ It  is  a  protest  rather  against  naturalistic  ethics 
than  against  Natural  Theology,  but  the  latter  is  included 
in  the  same  condemnation  with  the  former  type  of  theory. 
The  Author  of  Nature  cannot  be  at  once  good  and 
omnipotent. 

The  main  argument  of  the  essay  on  the  Utility  of 
Religion,  which,  like  that  on  Nature,  is  a  fine  specimen 
of  Mill's  philosophical  style,  is  the  sufficiency  of  the 
Religion  of  Humanity  and  its  superiority  to  all  but  the 
best  of  the  supernatural  religions.  *  Let  it  be  remembered 
that  if  individual  life  is  short,  the  life  of  the  human  species 
is  not  short ;  its  indefinite  duration  is  practically  equiva- 
lent to  endlessness  ;  and  being  cornbined  with  indefinite 
capability  of  improvement,  it  offers  to  the  imagination  and 
sympathies  a  large  enough  object  to  satisfy  any  reason- 
able demand  for  grandeur  of  aspiration.'  2  <  The  essence 
of  religion  is  the  strong  and  earnest  direction  of  the 
emotions  and  desires  towards  an  ideal  object,  recognized  as 
of  the  highest  excellence,  and  as  rightfully  paramount  over 
all  selfish  objects  of  desire.  This  condition  is  fulfilled  by 
the  Religion  of  Humanity  in  as  eminent  a  degree,  and  in 
as  high  a  sense,  as  by  the  supernatural  religions  even  in 
their  best  manifestations,  and  far  more  so  than  in  any 
of  their  others.' ^  The  characteristic  tendency  of  super- 
naturalism  is  to  arrest  the  development  not  only  of  the 
intellectual  but  also  of  the  moral  nature.  Its  appeal  is  to 
self-interest  rather  than  to  disinterested  and  ideal  motives  j 
and  like  the  intuitional  theory  of  ethics,  it  stereotypes 
morality.  The  special  appeal  of  supernatural  religion  is 
to  our  sense  of  the  mystery  which  circumscribes  our  little 
knowledge  ;  but  the  same  appeal  is  made,  and  the  same 

1  Essays  on  Religion,  p.  28.        '  Ibid..,  p.  106.        ^  Ibid.,  p.  109. 


276         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

service  to  the  imagination  rendered,  by  Poetry.  '  Religion 
and  poetry  address  themselves,  at  least  in  one  of  their 
aspects,  to  the  same  part  of  the  human  constitution  :  they 
both  supply  the  same  vi^ant,  that  of  ideal  conceptions 
grander  and  more  beautiful  than  we  see  realized  in  the 
prose  of  human  life.'  ^  '  The  idealization  of  our  earthly 
life,  the  cultivation  of  a  high  conception  of  what  it 
may  be  made,'  is  ^  capable  of  supplying  a  poetry,  and,  in 
the  best  sense  of  the  w^ord,  a  religion,  equally  fitted  to 
exalt  the  feelings,  and  (vs^ith  the  same  aid  from  education) 
still  better  calculated  to  ennoble  the  conduct,  than  any 
belief  respecting  the  unseen  powers.'  ^  Yet  '  he  to 
whom  ideal  good,  and  the  progress  of  the  world  towards 
it,  are  already  a  religion '  may  find  consolation  and  en- 
couragement in  the  belief  that  he  is  'a  fellow-labourer 
with  the  Highest,  a  fellow-combatant  in  the  great  strife  ; 
contributing  his  little,  which  by  the  aggregation  of  many 
like  himself  becomes  much,  towards  that  progressive 
ascendancy,  and  ultimately  complete  triumph  of  good 
over  evil,  which  history  points  to,  and  which  this  doctrine 
teaches  us  to  regard  as  planned  by  the  Being  to  whom  we 
owe  all  the  benevolent  contrivance  we  behold  in  Nature. 
Against  the  moral  tendency  of  this  creed  no  possible  objec- 
tion can  lie  :  it  can  produce  on  whoever  can  succeed  in 
believing  it,  no  other  than  an  ennobling  effect.'  ^ 

The  essay  on  Theism  bears  evidence,  in  the  imper- 
fection of  its  construction  and  the  inferiority  of  its  style, 
to  its  lack  of  the  author's  final  revision.  The  argument 
for  a  First  Cause  is  condemned,  on  the  ground  that  there 
is  a  permanent  element  in  nature  itself;  *  as  far  as 
anything  can  be  concluded  from  human  experience, 
Force  has  all  the  attributes  of  a  thing  eternal  and  un- 
created.' *  The  argument  from  Design  is  found  to  be  less 
unsatisfactory.  The  principle  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
while  not  inconsistent  with  Creation,  *  would  greatly 
attenuate  the  evidence  for  it.'  But  *  leaving  this  remark- 
able speculation  to  whatever  fate  the  progress  of  discovery 

*  Essays  on  Religion,  p.  103.  *  Ibid.,  p.  105. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  117.  *  Ibid.,  p.  147. 


JOHN   STUART   MILL  277 

may  have  in  store  for  it,'  Mill  concludes  that  '  it  must 
be  allowed  that,  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge, 
the  adaptations  in  Nature  afford  a  large  balance  of  prob- 
ability in  favour  of  creation  by  intelligence.'^  On  the 
other  hand,  '  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  every  indica- 
tion of  Design  in  the  Kosmos  is  so  much  evidence  against 
the  Omnipotence  of  the  Designer.'  ^  The  necessity 
of  contrivance,  or  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  implies 
limitation  of  power  in  the  agent.  As  to  Immortality, 
there  is  '  a  total  absence  of  evidence  on  either  side.' 
Miracles,  while  not  impossible,  are  extremely  improbable, 
even  on  the  hypothesis  of  a  supernatural  Being.  The 
reasonable  attitude,  on  all  these  questions,  is  that  of 
scepticism,  as  distinguished  alike  from  belief  and  from 
atheism.  *If  we  are  right  in  the  conclusions  to  which  we 
have  been  led  by  the  preceding  inquiry,  there  is  evidence, 
but  insufficient  for  proof,  and  amounting  only  to  one  of 
the  lower  degrees  of  probability.  The  indication  given 
by  such  evidence  as  there  is,  points  to  the  creation,  not 
indeed  of  the  universe,  but  of  the  present  order  of  it,  by 
an  Intelligent  Mind,  whose  power  over  the  materials  was 
not  absolute,  whose  love  for  his  creatures  was  not  his 
sole  actuating  inducement,  but  who  nevertheless  desired 
their  good.'^  Where  belief  is  not  warranted,  how- 
ever, hope  is  permissible,  and  the  imagination  need  not  be 
controlled  by  purely  rational  considerations.  'To  me  it 
seems  that  human  life,  small  and  confined  as  it  is,  and  as, 
considered  merely  in  the  present,  it  is  likely  to  remain 
even  when  the  progress  of  material  and  moral  improve- 
ment may  have  freed  it  from  the  greater  part  of  its  present 
calamities,  stands  greatly  in  need  of  any  wider  range  and 
greater  height  of  aspiration  for  itself  and  its  destination, 
which  the  exercise  of  imagination  can  yield  to  it  without 
running  counter  to  the  evidence  of  fact ;  and  that  it  is  a 
part  of  wisdom  to  make  the  most  of  any,  even  small,  prob- 
abilities on  this  subject,  which  furnish  imagination  with 
any    footing   to   support   itself  upon.'  *     Above   all,  the 

1  Essays  on  Religion,  p.  174.  *  Ibid.,  p.  176. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  242,  *  Ibid.,  p.  245. 


278  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

conception  of  a  morally  perfect  being,  and  of  his  appro- 
bation, is  an  inspiration  for  the  moral  life  which  would  be 
sorely  missed,  and  Christianity  has  provided  us  with  an 

*  ideal  representative  and  guide  of  humanity' ;  *  nor,  even 
now,  would  it  be  easy,  even  for  an  unbeliever,  to  find  a 
better  translation  of  the  rule  of  virtue  from  the  abstract 
into  the  concrete,  than  to  endeavour  so  to  live  that  Christ 
would  approve  our  life.'^  *The  feeling  of  helping  God  * 
in  the  struggle  with  evil  is  *  excellently  fitted  to  aid  and 
fortify  that  real,  though  purely  human  religion,  which  some- 
times calls  itself  the  Religion  of  Humanity  and  sometimes 
that  of  Duty,'  and  which  '  is  destined,  with  or  without 
supernatural  sanctions,  to  be  the  religion  of  the  Future.' 

Bain's  two  great  psychological  treatises.  The  Senses  and 
the  Intellect  (1855)  and  The  Emotions  and  the  fFill  (iSsg), 
form  the  connecting  link  between  the  Associationism  of 
the  Mills  and  the  scientific  and  evolutionary  philosophy  of 
Herbert  Spencer.  Their  importance  is  fully  acknowledged 
both  by  J.  S.  Mill  and  by  Spencer.  Mill,  referring  to 
a  statement  by  M'Cosh  that  Bain  had  *  elaborated  into  a 
minute  system  the  general  statements  scattered  throughout 
Mr.  Mill's  Logicy  says  :  *  Mr.  Bain  did  not  stand  in  need 
of  any  predecessor  except  our  common  precursors,  and  has 
taught  much  more  to  me,  on  these  subjects,  than  there  is 
any  reasonable  probability  that  I  can  have  taught  to  him.'  ^ 

*  Estimated  as  a  means  to  higher  results,'  says  Spencer, 
'  Mr.  Bain's  work  is  of  great  value.  .  .  .  We  repeat, 
that  as  a  natural  history  of  the  mind,  we  believe  it 
to  be  the  best  yet  produced.  It  is  a  most  valuable 
collection  of  carefully  elaborated  materials.  Perhaps  we 
cannot  better  express  our  sense  of  its  worth  than  by 
saying  that  to  those  who  hereafter  give  10  this  branch 
of  psychology  a  thoroughly  scientific  organisation,  Mr. 
Bain's  book  will  be  indispensable.'  *     Wher  we  compare 

•  Essays  on  Religion,  p.  255. 

•  Examination  of  Hamilton,  p.  274,  note. 

•  Essays,  ed.  1863,  i.   121  (quoted  by  Ribot,  English  Psychology^ 
p.  250). 


ALEXANDER   BAIN  279 

these  treatises  with  the  earher  works  of  the  Scottish 
philosophers,  and  even  with  that  of  James  Mill,  we  cannot 
help  remarking  that  they  are  scientific  in  a  sense  in  which 
those  were  not.  It  is  not  merely  that  Bain  is  the  first  to 
use  effectively  the  physiological  method,  referring  psycho- 
logical phenomena  to  their  correlates  in  nerve  and  brain, 
but  that  he  adopts  throughout  the  genetic,  if  not  the 
evolutionary  method,  tracing  the  complex  to  the  simple 
and  the  later  to  the  earlier,  and  thus  explaining,  where 
his  predecessors  had  been  content  to  do  little  more  than 
describe,  the  phenomena  of  the  mental  life.  When  we  add 
to  this  scientific  purpose,  resolutely  held  to  throughout 
the  investigation,  his  remarkable  gift  of  lucid  exposition 
and  of  apposite  and  telling  illustration,  we  can  under- 
stand the  immense  influence  which  Bain  exerted  as  a 
teacher  upon  his  pupils  and  as  a  writer  upon  his  successors 
in  this  field  of  scientific  inquiry.  At  the  same  time,  it  is 
to  be  remarked  that  it  is  rather  in  the  sphere  of  scientific 
psychology  than  in  that  of  speculative  philosophy  that  his 
influence  is  to  be  traced.  In  ethics,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  importance  of  his  contribution  to  the  Utilitarian  theory 
is  not  to  be  underestimated. 

In  psychology  Bain  is  a  convinced  Associationist,  and 
he  applies  himself  with  all  the  ardour  of  the  Mills  to 
trace  to  their  common  source  in  experience  and  associa- 
tion all  those  ideas  which  others  have  held  to  be  intuitive, 
and  have  attributed  to  some  original  faculty  of  the  mind. 
His  statement  and  illustration  of  the  laws  of  association  is 
not  merely  much  fuller  than  those  given  by  his  prede- 
cessors, and  applied  to  the  emotional  and  volitional  as 
carefully  as  to  the  intellectual  life  ;  it  also  shows  a  clearer 
apprehension  of  the  nature  of  the  process.  His  definite 
differentiation  of  Similarity  from  Contiguity,  as  an  in- 
dependent and  equally  important  principle  of  Association, 
adds  materially  to  the  value  of  Association  as  a  psycho- 
logical principle,  while  his  sense  of  the  limitations  of  its 
validity  saves  him  from  the  errors  into  which  its  earlier 
advocates  had  been  betrayed.  Apart  from  the  doctrine  of 
Association,  his  chief  contributions  to  psychology  are  his 


2  8o         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

differentiation  of  the  muscular  and  organic  senses  from  the 
traditional  five  senses  of  earlier  psychology  ;  his  insistence 
upon  the  *  Law  of  Relativity,'  or  the  presence  of  discrimina- 
tion, or  the  apprehension  of  difference,  as  well  as  similarity, 
and  of  retentiveness  as  the  condition  of  both,  in  the  most 
rudimentary  forms  of  knowledge  ;  his  recognition  of  spon- 
taneity, or  *  random  movement,'  as  the  basis  of  the  later 
purposive  movements  which  are  the  elementary  form  of 
Will ;  his  doctrine  of  the  instinctive  origin  of  all  the 
higher  forms  of  mentality  ;  and  his  explanation  of  Belief, 
not  in  terms  of  Association,  but  in  its  relation  to  action 
and  emotion. 

The  account  of  Belief  is  hardly  less  important  from  a 
metaphysical  than  from  a  psychological  point  of  view. 
The  crucial  point  is  the  bearing  of  action  upon  belief. 
*  Preparedness  to  act  upon  what  we  affirm  is  admitted  on  all 
hands  to  be  the  sole,  the  genuine,  the  unmistakable  criterion 
of  belief.'  ^  We  believe  in  an  *  order  of  nature,'  or  a '  course 
of  things '  as  a  series  of  means  to  ends,  which  we  proceed  to 
realise  by  our  choice  of  the  means.  *  The  first  germ  and 
perennial  substance  of  the  state,'  however,  is  '  primitive 
credulity,'  or  an  innate  tendency  to  believe  everything 
indiscriminately,  which  Bain  contrasts  with  that  *  acquired 
scepticism '  which  is  the  result  of  the  shock  of  contradiction, 
the  thwarting  of  our  expectations,  by  experience  of  the 
actual  order  of  nature.  We  start  with  *an  overweening 
belief  in  the  uniformity  of  nature,'  which  is  gradually 
checked  and  educated  by  our  growing  experience.  The 
great  lesson  of  experience  is  that  the  warrant  of  belief  or 
disbelief  is  to  be  found  not  in  the  mere  frequency  or  rarity 
of  the  uniformities,  but  in  their  '  comparative  frequency.' 
The  function  of  experience  and  repetition  is  not  to  origi- 
nate, but  to  confirm  or  correct  the  original  tendency  to 
belief,  strengthening  or  weakening  it  according  to  the 
number  and  the  nature  of  the  agreements  and  contradic- 
tions respectively.  We  are  thus  enabled  to  correct  the 
error  of  the  Associationist  explanation.   *  When  James  Mill 

*  Emotions  and  Will,  3rd  ed.,  p.  505. 


ALEXANDER   BAIN  281 

represented  Belief  as  the  offspring  of  "  inseparable  associa- 
tion," he  put  the  stress  upon  the  wrong  point.  If  two 
things  have  been  incessantly  conjoined  in  our  experience, 
they  are  inseparably  associated,  and  we  believe  that  the 
one  will  be  followed  by  the  other  ;  but  the  inseparable 
association  follows  the  number  of  repetitions,  the  belief 
follows  the  absence  of  contradiction.  We  have  a  stronger 
mental  association  between  "  Diana  of  the  Ephesians  "  and 
the  epithet  "  great,"  than  probably  existed  in  the  minds 
of  Diana's  own  worshippers ;  yet  they  believed  in  the 
assertion,  and  we  do  not,'  ^  As  against  J.  S.  Mill's  view 
that  the  belief  in  the  ideas  of  memory,  as  distinguished 
from  those  of  imagination,  is  inexplicable.  Bain  holds  that 
'  the  principal  distinction  between  Memory  and  Imagina- 
tion lies  in  the  setting  of  the  respective  ideas.  Ideas  of 
Memory  have  a  place  in  the  continuous  chain  of  our 
remembered  life ;  ideas  of  Imagination  correspond  to 
nothing  in  that  chain  ;  or  rather,  they  are  consciously 
combined  from  different  ideas  of  Memory  taken  out  of 
their  Memory-setting,  and  aggregated  under  a  special 
motive.'^  He  also  traces  with  great  skill  the  influence 
of  emotion  upon  belief,  and  the  *  power  of  the  Will,  as 
representing  our  likings  and  dislikings,  to  shape  our 
creeds.'  ^ 

Closely  connected  with  his  general  theory  of  Belief  is 
the  account  which  Bain  gives  of  our  belief  in  the  material 
or  external  world,  or,  more  strictly,  of  the  objective  as 
distinguished  from  the  subjective  element  in  consciousness. 
The  material  or  external  object  is  not  the  product  of 
passive  sensation,  or  of  the  influence  of  the  non-ego  upon 
the  ego  ;  an  object  out  of  relation  to  the  subject,  matter 
independent  of  mind,  is  a  contradiction  in  terms.  The 
real  source  of  belief  in  the  object  is  the  forth-putting  of 
energy  by  the  subject.  *The  sum  total  of  all  the 
occasions  for  putting  forth  active  energy,  or  for  con- 
ceiving this  as  possible  to  be  put  forth,  is  our  external 
world.'  *     *  The  feeling  that  is  the  deepest  foundation  of 

^  Emotions  and  Will,  p.  527.  *  Ibid.,  p.  534. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  525.  *  Senses  and  Intellect,  3rd  ed.,  p.  377. 


282  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

our  notion  of  externality '  is  the  feeling  of  resistance,  the 
*  mixed  state,  produced  through  reacting  upon  a  sensation 
of  touch  by  a  muscular  exertion.'  This  feeling  of  resis- 
tance, or  'expended  muscular  energy,'  is  the  objective 
side  of  consciousness,  as  sensation  wholly  passive  is  its 
subjective  side.  *  The  doctrine  of  an  external  and  inde- 
pendent world  '  is  a  '  generalisation  or  abstraction  grounded 
on  our  particular  experiences,  summing  up  the  past, 
and  predicting  the  future.'^  The  doctrine  of  Natural 
Realism  is  a  species  of  that  metaphysical  Realism  which 
attributes  reality  to  the  abstract  universals,  rather  than  to 
the  concrete  particulars  of  our  experience  from  which 
they  are  derived. 

While  accepting  the  general  standpoint  of  Utilitarianism 
in  ethics.  Bain  works  out  the  theory,  in  several  points, 
/much  more  carefully  and  consistently  than  J.  S.  Mill. 
He  definitely  rejects  the  view  that  the  only  possible 
motive  of  action  is  desire  of  our  own  pleasure.  '  It  seems 
to  me  that  we  must  face  the  seeming  paradox — that  there 
are,  in  the  human  mind,  motives  that  pull  against  our 
happiness.'^  Disintefested  and  'ptrrcly-altruistic  action, 
he  holds,  is  not  merely  possible  but  normal,  and  virtue 
lin  its  highest  form  is  always  disinterested.  He  is  thus 
lenabled  to  explain  that  *  conscience '  which  had  for  Mill 
remained  inexplicable.  Distinguishing  the  dutiful  or 
)bligatory  from  the  virtuous  or  optional,  he  explains  the 
former  in  terms  of  social  penalties,  the  latter  in  terms  of 
social  rewards.  *  The  powers  that  impose  the  obligatory 
sanction  are  Law  and  Society,  or  the  community  acting 
through  the  Government  by  public  judicial  acts,  and, 
apart  from  the  Government,  by  the  unofficial  expressions 
of  disapprobation  and  the  exclusion  from  social  good 
offices.'  ^  The  result  of  this  social  pressure  is  not 
merely  the  enforcement  of  the  type  of  conduct  socially 
approved,  but  the  development,  in  the  mind  of  the  indi- 
vidual who  is  subjected  to  it,  of  the  sense  of  duty,  or 
conscience,  which  adds  its  own  pressure  to  that  which 

*  Senses  and  Intellect,  p.  382.  *  Emotions  and  Will,  p.  296. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  264. 


ALEXANDER   BAIN  283 

comes  from  without.  Conscience  is  thus  *an  ideal  re- 
semblance of  public  authority,  growing  up  in  the  individual 
mind,  and  working  to  the  same  end,'  ^  '  an  imita- 
tion within  ourselves  of  the  government  without  us.'^ 
The  sentiment  of  fear  is  gradually  supplemented  and 
superseded  by  *a  sentiment  of  love  or  respect  towards 
the  person  of  the  superior,'  until  *the  young  mind  is 
able  to  take  notice  of  the  use  and  meaning  of  the  pro- 
hibitions imposed  upon  it,  and  to  approve  of  the  end 
intended  by  them.'  *  All  that  we  understand  by  the 
authority  of  conscience,  the  sentiment  of  obligation,  the 
feeling  of  right,  the  sting  of  remorse — can  be  nothing  else 
than  so  many  modes  of  expressing  the  acquired  aversion 
and  dread  towards  certain  actions  associated  in  the  mind 
with  the  consequences  now  stated.  .  .  .The  dread  of  antici- 
pated evil  operating  to  restrain  before  the  fact,  and  the 
pain  realized  after  the  act  has  been  performed,  are  per- 
fectly intelligible  products  of  the  education  of  the  mind 
under  a  system  of  authority,  and  of  experience  of  the 
good  and  evil  consequences  of  actions.'  ^  Out  of  the 
'  slavish   conscience '  of  the  child   is  thus  developed  the 

*  citizen   conscience '  of  the  adult,  which  has  regard   to 

*  the  intent  and  meaning  of  the  law,  and  not  to  the  mere 
fact  of  its  being  prescribed  by  some  power '  ;  *  the 
individual  conscience  becomes  independent  of  social 
rewards  and  punishments.  *We  may  by  rewards  and 
punishments  make  men  perform  their  social  duties  ;  but 
such  performance  is  by  that  fact  rendered  self-regarding. 
To  obtain  virtue  in  its  highest  purity,  its  noblest  hue,  we 
have  to  abstain  from  the  mention  of  both  punishment 
and  reward.'  This  is  true  even  of  the  theological 
sanctions  :  ^  in  the  thunders  of  eternal  reward  and  punish- 
ment, there  cannot  be  heard  the  still  small  voice  of  a 
purely  disinterested  motive.'  ^ 

1  Emotions  and  Will,  p.  264.         *  Ibid.,  p.  285.         *  Ibid.,  p.  286. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  288.  *  Ibid.,  p.  297. 


284         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 


2.  Evolutionism  :  Herbert    Spencer 

It  remained  for  a  thinker  more  ambitious  than 
Bain,  and  more  profoundly  impressed  with  the  philo- 
sophical significance  of  the  principle  of  Evolution,  to 
develop  a  philosophy  of  evolution,  to  attempt  the  con- 
struction of  a  system  of  the  sciences,  or  the  complete 
unification  of  knowledge,  by  the  discovery  in  each  of  the 
special  sciences  of  a  single  identical  phenomenon,  that  of 
Evolution.  This  task  was  attempted  by  Spencer,  whose 
philosophy,  in  spite  of  its  agnostic  basis,  is  therefore 
systematic  in  a  sense  in  which  that  of  none  of  his  English 
predecessors,  with  the  possible  exception  of  Hobbes,  can 
be  so  described.  *  He  alone,'  says  Lewes,  '  of  all  British 
thinkers  has  organised  a  system  of  philosophy.'  He 
attempts  to  construct  that  system  of  the  sciences  which 
Bacon  did  little  more  than  sketch  as  an  ideal  to  be  realised 
through  the  labours  of  his  successors.  His  philosophy  is 
systematic  in  a  sense  in  which  hardly  any  other  philosophy 
can  be  so  described.  As  Professor  Dewey  has  said,  '  The 
other  systems  are  such  after  all  more  or  less  ex  post  facto. 
In  themselves  they  have  the  unity  of  the  development  of 
a  single  mind,  rather  than  of  a  predestined  planned 
achievement.  They  are  systems  somewhat  in  and  through 
retrospect.  Their  completeness  owes  something  to  the 
mind  of  the  onlooker  gathering  together  parts  which 
have  grown  up  more  or  less  separately  and  in  response 
to  felt  occasions,  to  particular  problems.  .  .  .  But  Spencer's 
system  was  3.  system  from  the  very  start.  It  was  a 
system  in  conception,  not  merely  in  issue.' ^  Spencer 
himself  speaks  of  the  operation  in  him  of  *the  archi- 
tectonic instinct,  the  love  of  system-building,  as  it  would 
be  called  in  less  complimentary  language.  During  these 
thirty  years  it  has  been  a  source  of  frequent  elation  to 
see  each  division,  and  each  part  of  a  division,  working 
out   into   congruity   with    the   rest — to   see   each    com- 

*  PAit.  Rev.,  xiii.  i6a 


HERBERT   SPENCER  285 

ponent    fitting    into    its    place,   and    helping    to  make   a 
harmonious  whole.' ^ 

Hardly    less    remarkable    than    Spencer's    intellectual 
ambition  is  his  intellectual  independence,  what  Professor 
Dewey  calls  his  ^  singular  immunity  from  all  intellectual 
contagion,'  what  he  himself  notes  as  '  an  unusually  small 
tendency  to  be  affected  by  others'  thoughts.'     *  It  seems  as 
though  the  fabric  of  my  conclusions  had  in  all  cases  to  be 
developed  from  within — refused  to  be  built,  and  insisted 
upon    growing.     Material  which  could  be  taken  in  and 
organised,  or  re-organised,  so  as  to  form  part  of  a  coherent 
structure  in   course  of  elaboration,  there    was   always   a 
readiness  to  receive.     But  ideas  and  sentiments  of  alien 
kinds,  or  unorganisable  kinds,  were,  if  not  rejected,  yet 
accepted    with    indifference    and    soon    dropped    away.'  ^ 
Even  the  great  classics  of  philosophical  literature  were,  if 
not  unread,  merely  dipped  into,  and  cast  aside  as  soon  as 
it  became  clear,  as  it  must  very  soon  have  become  in  most 
cases,   that  their  point  of  view  was  *  alien '  to  Spencer's 
own  modes  of  thought.     Plato's  dialogues,  for  example,  he 
found  it  impossible   to   read.     '  Time  after  time  I  have 
attempted  to  read,  now  this  dialogue  and  now  that,  and 
have  put  it  down  in  a  state  of  impatience  with  the  in- 
definiteness  of  the  thinking  and  the  mistaking  of  words 
for  things :  being  repelled  also  by  the  rambling  form  of 
the  argument.  .  .  .  When  I  again  took  up  the  dialogues, 
I    contemplated  them    as   works    of  art,  and    put    them 
aside  in  greater  exasperation  than  before.' ^     'All  through 
my  life  Locke's  Essay  had  been  before  me  on  my  father's 
shelves,  but  I  had  never  taken  it  down  ;  or,  at  any  rate,  I 
have  no  recollection   of  having  ever  read  a   page  of  it.' 
Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  fared  no  better.     *  This  I 
commenced  reading,  but  did  not  go  far.     The   doctrine 
that  Time  and  Space  are  "  nothing  but "  subjective  forms 
— pertain  exclusively  to  consciousness  and  have  nothing 
beyond    consciousness  answering  to  them — I  rejected  at 
once  and   absolutely  ;    and,    having   done   so,    went    no 

^  Autobiog.,  ii.  450.  2   /j/^.^  i.  242.  3  Jbid,^  u.  442. 


2  86  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

further.'  ^  He  adds  that  '  whenever,  in  later  years,  I  have 
taken  up  Kant's  Critique  of  Pure  Reason^  I  have  similarly 
stopped  short  after  rejecting  its  primary  proposition.' 

In  March,  i860,  Spencer  issued  his  prospectus  of  the 
Synthetic  Philosophy,  under  the  title  '  A  System  of  Philo- 
sophy,' to  consist  of  the  following  parts:  (i)  First 
Principles,  containing  the  statement  of  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  system,  and  giving  the  system  itself  in 
outline  and  in  all  its  generality ;  (2)  passing  over  the 
application  of  these  First  Principles  to  Inorganic  Nature, 
as  being  of  less  immediate  importance  and  making  the 
scheme  impracticably  extensive,  the  Principles  of  Biology  j 
(3)  the  Principles  of  Psychology  ;  (4)  the  Principles  of 
Sociology  ;  (5)  the  Principles  of  Morality,  the  contents 
of  which  had  been  in  part  anticipated  in  Social  Statics. 
Ambitious  as  the  programme  is,  it  was  fully  carried  out, 
the  First  Principles  appearing  in  1862,  and  the  last  volume 
of  the  Principles  of  Sociology  in  1896. 

Tracing  the  genesis  of  our  *  ultimate  scientific  ideas,' 
Spencer  finds  the  universal  form  of  thought  in  Relation  : 
it  is  because  to  think  is  to  relate,  that  we  cannot  know 
Absolute  Reality.  Time  and  space  are  derived  by  abstrac- 
tion from  the  two  kinds  of  relation,  sequence  and  co- 
existence. *  The  abstract  of  all  sequences  is  Time.  The 
abstract  of  all  co-existences  is  Space.  .  .  .  Time  and  Space 
are  generated,  as  other  abstracts  are  generated  from  other 
concretes  :  the  only  difference  being,  that  the  organisation 
of  experiences  has,  in  these  cases,  been  going  on  through- 
out the  entire  evolution  of  intelligence.'  ^  The  con- 
ception of  Matter  has  a  similarly  empirical  origin.  *■  Our 
conception  of  Matter,  reduced  to  its  simplest  shape,  is 
that  of  co-existent  positions  that  offer  resistance  ;  as  con- 
trasted with  our  conception  of  Space,  in  which  the  co- 
existent positions  offer  no  resistance.'  As  consisting 
of  co-existing  positions.  Matter  is  also  extended  ;  but  '  of 
these  two  inseparable  elements,  the  resistance  is  primary, 

^  Autobiog.,  i.  252.  •  First  Principles,  p.  164. 


HERBERT   SPENCER  287 

and  the  extension  secondary.  Occupied  extension,  or 
Body,  being  distinguished  in  consciousness  from  un- 
occupied extension,  or  Space,  by  its  resistance,  this  attri- 
bute must  clearly  have  precedence  in  the  genesis  of 
the  idea.'  ^  The  idea  of  Motion  is  derived  from  our 
earliest  experiences  of  force.  *  Out  of  this  primitive  con- 
ception of  Motion,  the  adult  conception  of  it  is  developed 
simultaneously  with  the  development  of  the  conceptions 
of  Space  and  Time  :  all  three  being  evolved  from  the  more 
multiplied  and  varied  impressions  of  muscular  tension  and 
objective  resistance.  Motion,  as  we  know  it,  is  thus 
traceable,  in  common  with  the  other  ultimate  scientific 
ideas,  to  experiences  of  force.'  ^ 

Force  is  thus  seen  to  be  *  the  ultimate  of  ultimates.* 
*  Though  Space,  Time,  Matter,  and  Motion,  are  ap- 
parently all  necessary  data  of  intelligence,  yet  a  psycho- 
logical analysis  .  .  .  shows  us  that  these  are  either  built 
up  of,  or  abstracted  from,  experiences  of  Force.' ^  As 
to  the  relation  of  *  this  undecomposable  mode  of  con- 
sciousness '  to  '  the  Power  manifested  to  us  through 
phenomena,'  Spencer  does  not  seem  clear.  *  Force,  as 
we  know  it,'  he  says,  *can  be  regarded  only  as  a  certain 
conditioned  effect  of  the  Unconditioned  Cause — as  the 
relative  reality  indicating  to  us  an  Absolute  Reality  by 
which  it  is  immediately  produced.'  The  doctrine  to 
which  we  are  brought  is  neither  realism  nor  idealism, 
but  *  transfigured  realism.'  *  Getting  rid  of  all  complica- 
tions, and  contemplating  pure  Force,  we  are  irresistibly 
compelled  by  the  relativity  of  our  thought,  to  vaguely 
conceive  some  unknown  force  as  the  correlative  of  the 
known  force.  Noumenon  and  phenomenon  are  here 
presented  in  their  primordial  relation  as  two  sides  of  the 
same  change,  of  which  we  are  obliged  to  regard  the 
last  as  no  less  real  than  the  first.'*  But  at  the  end 
of  the  chapter  on  *  the  persistence  of  force '  he  says  : 
'  The  force  of  which  we  assert  persistence  is  that  Absolute 
Force  of  which  we  are  indefinitely  conscious  as  the  neces- 

^  First  Principles,  p.  i66.  *  Ibid.,  p.  i68. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  169.  *  Ibid.,  p.  170. 


288  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

sary  correlate  of  the  force  we  know.  By  the  Persistence 
of  Force  we  really  mean  the  persistence  of  some  Cause 
which  transcends  our  knowledge  and  conception.  In 
asserting  it  we  assert  an  Unconditioned  Reality,  without 
beginning  or  end.  .  .  .  The  sole  truth  which  transcends 
experience  by  underlying  it,  is  thus  the  Persistence  of 
Force.  This  being  the  basis  of  experience,  must  be  the 
basis  of  any  scientific  organisation  of  experiences.  To 
this  an  ultimate  analysis  brings  us  down  ;  and  on  this  a 
rational  synthesis  must  build  up.'  ^ 

From  the  persistence  of  force  follows  the  persistence  of 
relations  among  forces,  or  the  uniformity  of  law.  '  The 
general  conclusion  that  there  exist  constant  connexions 
among  phenomena,  ordinarily  regarded  as  an  inductive 
conclusion  only,  is  really  a  conclusion  deducible  from  the 
ultimate  datum  of  consciousness '  [the  persistence  of  force]. ^ 
A  further  consequence  is  the  transformation  and  equi- 
valence of  all  forces.  This  holds,  according  to  Spencer, 
of  the  relation  of  physical  to  mental  forces,  no  less  than  in 
the  case  of  merely  physical  forces.  *The  law  of  meta- 
morphosis, which  holds  among  the  physical  forces,  holds 
equally  between  them  and  the  mental  forces.  Those 
modes  of  the  Unknowable  which  we  call  motion,  heat, 
light,  chemical  affinity,  etc.,  are  alike  transformable  into 
each  other,  and  into  those  modes  of  the  Unknowable 
which  we  distinguish  as  sensation,  emotion,  thought : 
these,  in  their  turns,  being  directly  or  indirectly  re- 
transformable  into  the  original  shapes.'^  Finally  the 
direction  of  motion  is  *that  of  the  greatest  force,'  or  that 
of  the  least  resistance  ;  and  the  rhythm  of  motion,  or  the 
doctrine  of  the  alternate  action  and  reaction  of  forces, 
follows  from  *  the  co-existence  everywhere  of  antagonistic 
forces.' 

We  have  not  yet,  however,  reached  the  synthesis  or 
complete  unification  of  knowledge  in  which  philosophy 
consists  ;  we  have  not  yet  formulated  the  law  of  the 
cosmic   process  as   a   whole.     All   these   are   '  analytical 

»  First  Principles,  p.  192.  *  Ibid.,  p.  195.         '  Ibid.,  p.  217. 


HERBERT   SPENCER  289 

truths ' ;  what  we  are  seeking  for  is  '  a  universal  synthesis.' 
*  Having  seen  that  matter  is  indestructible,  motion  con- 
tinuous, and  force  persistent — having  seen  that  forces  are 
everywhere  undergoing  transformation,  and  that  motion, 
always  following  the  line  of  least  resistance,  is  invariably 
rhythmic,  it  remains  to  discover  the  similarly  invariable 
formula  expressing  the  combined  consequences  of  the 
actions  thus  separately  formulated.'^  This  compre- 
hensive '  law  of  the  continuous  redistribution  of  matter 
and  motion '  is  the  Law  of  Evolution  ;  and  it  is  reached 
first  inductively,  from  a  study  of  the  actual  phenomena, 
then  deductively,  as  an  implication  of  the  persistence 
of  force. 

In  every  evolving  phenomenon  we  find  three  charac- 
teristic features — integration,  differentiation,  and  deter- 
mination :  a  change  from  incoherence  to  coherence, 
from  homogeneity  to  heterogeneity,  from  indefiniteness  to 
definiteness.  First,  there  is  an  integration  of  matter  and 
accompanying  dissipation  of  motion.  This  is  illustrated 
by  the  evolution  of  the  solar  system  from  the  primitive 
nebular  mass,  of  the  plant  or  animal  from  the  elements 
which  enter  into  the  composition  of  its  body,  as  well  as 
by  the  evolution  of  the  State  from  the  looser  combinations 
of  tribal  communities  and  by  *  the  integrations  of  advanc- 
ing Language,  Science,  and  Art.'^  Secondly,  there  is  a 
growing  diflferentiation  of  structure,  alike  in  the  parts  and 
in  the  whole,  as  we  see  in  the  differentiation  of  the  several 
planets  from  one  another,  in  the  evolution  of  the  different 
species  of  plant  and  animal,  in  the  differentiation  of  struc- 
ture and  function  within  the  animal  body  as  well  as  in 
the  social  organism  and  in  the  psychological  life  of  man. 
Thirdly,  there  is  a  change  from  confusion  to  order,  or 
from  the  indefinite  to  the  definite,  as  the  same  examples 
show.  Accompanying  these  changes  we  find  a  parallel 
transformation  of  the  retained  motion.  The  complete 
definition  of  Evolution,  therefore,  is  :  '  Evolution  is  an 
integration    of    matter    and    concomitant    dissipation    of 

1  First  Principles,  p.  276.  *  Ibid.,  p.  319. 

T 


290         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

motion  ;  during  which  the  matter  passes  from  an  inde- 
finite, incoherent  homogeneity  to  a  definite,  coherent 
heterogeneity ;  and  during  which  the  retained  motion 
undergoes  a  parallel  transformation.'  ^ 

Is  it  possible  to  exhibit  the  law  of  Evolution,  thus 
inductively  established,  as  a  result  of  deductive  demon- 
stration ;  to  show  that  '  the  redistribution  of  matter  and 
motion  must  everywhere  take  place  in  those  ways,  and 
produce  those  traits,  which  celestial  bodies,  organisms, 
societies,  alike  display  ? '  ^  Can  we  deduce  the  pheno- 
mena of  evolution  from  the  Persistence  of  Force  ?  In  the 
first  place,  Spencer  replies,  the  transition  from  the  homo- 
geneous to  the  heterogeneous  is  an  obvious  consequence 
of '  the  instability  of  the  homogeneous.'  Secondly,  *  action 
and  re-action  being  equal  and  opposite,  it  follows  that  in 
differentiating  the  parts  on  which  it  falls  in  unlike  ways, 
the  incident  force  must  itself  be  correspondingly  differen- 
tiated. Instead  of  being,  as  before,  a  uniform  force, 
it  must  thereafter  be  a  multiform  force — a  group  of 
dissimilar  forces.'^  This  he  calls  the  law  of  'the 
multiplication  of  effects,'  or  *  the  production  of  many 
changes  by  one  cause.'  While  these  two  laws  explain  the 
nature  of  Evolution  as  a  movement  from  homogeneity  to 
heterogeneity,  they  do  not  explain  it  as  a  movement  from 
the  incoherent  to  the  coherent,  from  the  indefinite  to  the 
definite.  But  in  the  case  of  any  aggregate  of  unlike 
units,  or  groups  of  units,  these  are,  by  the  indiscriminate 
action  of  any  force  upon  them,  'separated  from  each 
other — segregated  into  minor  aggregates,  each  consisting 
of  units  that  are  severally  like  each  other  and  unlike  those 
of  the  other  minor  aggregates.'*  And  'other  things 
being  equal,  the  definiteness  of  the  separation  is  in  pro- 
portion to  the  definiteness  of  the  difference  between  the 
units.'  ^ 

The  tendency  of  Evolution  being  to  equilibrium,  the 
attainment  of  this  state  constitutes  its  '  impassable  limit.' 
'The   re-distributions  of  matter  that  go  on  around  us 

*  First  Principles,  p.  396.  '  Ibid.,  p.  398.  '  Ibid.,  p.  431. 

*  Ibid.,  p,  461.  '  Ibid.,  p.  463. 


HERBERT   SPENCER  291 

are  ever  being'  brought  to  conclusions  by  the  dissipation 
of  the  motions  which  effect  them.'  *  The  universal  co- 
existence of  antagonistic  forces  results  not  merely  in 
the  rhythmic  decomposition  of  every  force  into  divergent 
forces,  but  also  in  the  *  ultimate  establishment  of  a 
balance.'  'Every  motion  being  motion  under  resistance 
is  continually  suffering  deductions ;  and  these  unceasing 
deductions  finally  result  in  the  cessation  of  the  motion.'  2 
Dissolution  is  thus  the  inevitable  complement  of  Evo- 
lution. 'When  Evolution  has  run  its  course — when 
the  aggregate  has  at  length  parted  with  its  excess 
of  motion,  and  habitually  receives  as  much  from  its 
environment  as  it  habitually  loses — when  it  has  reached 
that  equilibrium  in  which  its  changes  end  ;  it  thereafter 
remains  subject  to  all  actions  in  its  environment  which 
may  increase  the  quantity  of  motion  it  contains,  and 
which,  in  the  lapse  of  time,  are  sure,  either  slowly  or 
suddenly,  to  give  its  parts  such  excess  of  motion  as 
will  cause  disintegration.' '  This  rhythmic  law  holds 
of  'the  entire  process  of  things,  as  displayed  in  the 
aggregate  of  the  visible  universe,'  as  well  as  of  each 
smaller  aggregate.  'And  thus  there  is  suggested  the 
conception  of  a  past  during  which  there  have  been 
successive  Evolutions  analogous  to  that  which  is  now 
going  on  ;  and  a  future  during  which  successive  other 
such  Evolutions  may  go  on — ever  the  same  in  principle 
but  never  the  same  in  concrete  result.'  * 

Spencer's  ultimate  interest  in  the  systematic  treatment 
of  all  problems  from  the  point  of  view  of  Evolution 
was,  according  to  his  own  account,  practical  rather  than 

1  First  Principles,  p.  483.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  4S4.  '  Ibid.,  p.  519. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  537.  The  extreme  vagueness  and  unintelligibility  of  the 
above  statement  of  Spencer's  views  is  not  to  be  set  down  to  the 
exigencies  of  condensation ;  it  is  inherent  in  the  '  System.'  The 
serious  student  cannot  but  feel,  with  Riehl,  that  Spencer's  '  law  of 
development  is  merely  a  play  with  analogies,  or  at  best  a  mere 
schematic  formula,  which  does  not  come  in  contact  with  phenomena 
to  explain  them,  but  only  describes  a  superficial  similarity  between 
different  kinds  of  natural  processes '  (Science  and  Metaphysics,  Eng. 
trans.,  p.  112). 


292  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

theoretical.  *The  whole  system,'  he  says  in  the  Auto- 
biography^ '  was  at  the  outset,  and  has  ever  continued 
to  be,  a  basis  for  a  right  rule  of  life,  individual  and 
social.'  In  the  Preface  to  the  Data  of  Ethics,  he 
says :  *  This  last  part  of  the  task  [the  Principles  of 
Morality]  it  is,  to  which  I  regard  all  the  preceding 
parts  as  subsidiary.  Written  as  far  back  as  1842,  my 
first  essay,  consisting  of  letters  on  The  Proper  Sphere  of 
Government,  vaguely  indicated  what  I  conceived  to  be 
certain  general  principles  of  right  and  wrong  in  political 
conduct ;  and  from  that  time  onwards  my  ultimate 
purpose,  lying  behind  all  proximate  purposes,  has  been 
that  of  finding  for  the  principles  of  right  and  wrong 
in  conduct  at  large,  a  scientific  basis.' 

His  earliest  work.  Social  Statics,  was  devoted  to  the 
fundamental  questions  of  ethics  and  politics  ;  and  the 
only  essential  difference  between  it  and  the  later  Principles 
of  Ethics  is  that  in  the  former  he  accepts,  in  a  somewhat 
restricted  form,  the  doctrine  of  a  '  moral  sense,'  which 
he  definitely  repudiates  in  the  latter.^  In  the  earlier 
work  he  condemns  the  doctrine  of  Expediency  on  account 
of  its  empirical  and  unscientific  character.  In  the  later 
he  insists  that  *  empirical  utilitarianism  is  but  a  transitional 
form  to  be  passed  through  on  the  way  to  rational 
utilitarianism';  that  'the  utilitarianism  which  recognises 
only  the  principles  of  conduct  reached  by  induction  is 
but  preparatory  to  the  utilitarianism  which  deduces  these 
principles  from  the  processes  of  life  as  carried  on  under 
established  conditions  of  existence.'^  Or,  as  he  puts 
it  in  his  letter  to  Mill,  partly  republished  in  the  chapter 
referred  to,  *  The  view  for  which  I  contend  is,  that  Morality 
properly  so-called — the  science  of  right  conduct — has  for  its 
object  to  determine  how  and  why  certain  modes  of  conduct 
are  detrimental,  and  certain  other  modes  beneficial.  These 
good  and  bad  results  cannot  be  accidental,  but  must 
be  necessary  consequences  of  the  constitution  of  things ; 
and  I   conceive   it  to  be  the  business  of  Moral   Science 

^lAutobio^.,  ii.  314.  *  Principles  of  Ethics,  pt.  ii.  sect.  191, 

'  DcUa  of  Ethics,  ch.  iv. 


HERBERT   SPENCER  293 

to  deduce,  from  the  laws  of  life  and  the  conditions  of 
existence,  what  kinds  of  actions  necessarily  tend  to 
produce  happiness,  and  what  kinds  to  produce  unhappiness. 
Having  done  this,  its  deductions  are  to  be  recognised 
as  laws  of  conduct ;  and  are  to  be  conformed  to  irre- 
spective of  a  direct  estimation  of  happiness  or  misery.'  ^ 

Alike  in  the  earlier  and  in  the  later  work  the  stand- 
point of  scientific  ethics  is  identified  with  that  of  the 
ideal  or  completely  evolved  social  state.  As  the  geo- 
metrician deals  with  the  ideally  straight  line,  'so  like- 
wise is  it  with  the  philosophical  moralist.  He  treats 
solely  of  the  straight  man.  He  determines  the  properties 
of  the  straight  man  ;  describes  how  the  straight  man 
comports  himself;  shows  in  what  relationship  he  stands 
to  other  straight  men ;  shows  how  a  community  of 
straight  men  is  constituted.  Any  deviation  from  strict 
rectitude  he  is  obliged  wholly  to  ignore.  It  cannot 
be  admitted  into  his  premises  without  vitiating  all  his 
conclusions.  A  problem  in  which  a  crooked  man  forms 
one  of  the  elements  is  insoluble  by  him.'  ^  A  dis- 
tinction is  drawn,  however,  between  two  branches  of 
social  philosophy,  statics  and  dynamics,  *  the  first  treating 
of  the  equilibrium  of  a  perfect  society,  the  second  of 
the  forces  by  which  society  is  advanced  towards  perfec- 
tion ' ;  ^  and  progress  is  defined  as  gradual  adaptation  to 
the  conditions,  especially  the  social  conditions,  or  gradual 
approximation  to  the  perfect  social  state,  in  which  the 
individual  acts  as  a  member  of  the  social  organism.  In 
the  Data  of  Ethics  the  same  distinction  is  described  as 
that  between  Absolute  and  Relative  Ethics.  'There 
exists  an  ideal  code  of  conduct  formulating  the  behaviour 
of  the  completely  adapted  man  in  the  completely  evolved 
society.  Such  a  code  is  that  here  called  Absolute  Ethics 
as  distinguished  from  Relative  Ethics — a  code  the  in- 
junctions of  which  are  alone  to  be  considered  as  absolutely 
right  in  contrast  with  those  that  are  relatively  right 
or  least  wrong  ;  and  which,  as  a  system  of  ideal  conduct, 

*  See  Note,  p.  297.  *  Social  Statics,  p.  57.  '  Ibid.,  p.  409. 


294         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

is  to  serve  as  a  standard  for  our  guidance  in  solving, 
as  well  as  we  can,  the  problems  of  real  conduc :.'  ^ 

Such  a  deductive  or  rational  ethics  must  lea  system 
developed  from  a  first  principle.  This  first  principle  is, 
in  both  works,  identified  with  Justice,  in  the  sense  of 
the  equal  right  of  every  individual  to  act  as  he  likes,  so  long 
as  he  does  not  interfere  with  the  same  liberty  on  the  part 
of  other  individuals;  and  this  principle  is  regz-rded,  in  Social 
Staticsy  as  an  intuition  or  *  instinct  of  personal  rights.' 
Although  Spencer  endeavours,  in  the  Principles^  to  derive 
this  from  *  animal  justice,'  ix.  is  in  reality,  as  Professor 
Albee  points  out,  the  antithesis  of  the  latter,  and  is  a 
deduction  from  the  eighteenth-century  individualism  in 
which  Spencer  so  devoutly  believed  rather  than  from 
Evolutionism.^  As  for  the  other  two  princi)<les, — Prudence, 
and  Beneficence,  negative  and  positive,  Spencer  accepts  the 
*  empirical  utilitarian '  account  in  both  works,  and  in  the 
Preface,  subsequently  withdrawn,  to  the  Part  of  the 
Principles  which  treats  of  them  he  confesses  that  '  the 
Doctrine  of  Evolution  has  not  furnished  guidance  to  the 
extent  I  had  hoped.  Most  of  the  conclusions,  drawn 
empirically,  are  such  as  right  feelings,  enlightened  by 
cultivated  intelligence,  have  already  sufficed  to  establish.' 

On  the  other  hand,  we  find  in  the  Data  of  Ethics  an 
interesting  attempt  to  exhibit  the  biological  significance 
of  pleasure  and  the  conciliation  which  the  evolution  of 
human  conduct  gradually  effects  between  egoism  and 
altruism  ;  to  give  an  evolutionary  interpretation  of  the 
sense  of  duty  as  the  survival  in  consciousness  of  the 
various  pre-moral  controls,  political,  religious,  and  social, 
which  gradually  gives  place  to  the  sense  o '  the  intrinsic 
authoritativeness  of  the  higher,  or  more  developed  feelings 
over  the  lower,  or  simpler  and  less  developt  1,  as  guides  of 
conduct ;  and  finally  to  reconcile  intuitior.ism  and  em- 
piricism, in  ethics  as  in  metaphysics,  by  t  le  distinction 
between  the  individual  and  the  racial  p(  mt  of  view. 
This    last    position    is    clearly   stated    in     he   following 

*  Data  of  Ethics,  p.  275. 

*  History  0/ English  Utilitarianism,  pp.  342,  356. 


'     HERBERT   SPENCER  295 

passage  from  Spencer's  letter  to  Mill.  ^  *  Corresponding 
to  the  funjJamental  propositions  of  a  developed  Moral 
Science,  th^re  have  been,  and  still  are,  developing  in  the 
race  certain,  fundamental  moral  intuitions ;  and  .  .  , 
though  these  moral  intuitions  are  the  results  of  ac- 
cumulated experiences  of  Utility,  gradually  organised 
and  inherited,  they  have  come  to  be  quite  independent 
of  conscious  j  experience.  Just  in  the  same  w^ay  that 
I  believe  the  intuition  of  space,  possessed  by  any  living 
individual,  to  have  arisen  from  organised  and  consolidated 
experiences  of  all  antecedent  individuals  w^ho  bequeathed 
to  him  their  slowly-developed  nervous  organisations — 
just  as  I  believe  that  this  intuition,  requiring  only  to 
be  made  definite  and  completed  by  personal  experiences, 
has  practically  become  a  form  of  thought,  apparently 
quite  independent  of  experience  ;  so  do  I  believe  that  the 
experiences  of  utility  organised  and  consolidated  through 
all  past  generations  of  the  human  race,  have  been  pro- 
ducing corresponding  nervous  modifications,  w^hich,  by 
continued  tra-.smission  and  accumulation,  have  become  in 
us  certain  faculties  of  moral  intuition — certain  emotions 
responding  to  right  and  wrong  conduct,  which  have  no 
apparent  basis  in  the  individual  experiences  of  utility.' 

The  individualism  which  underlies  his  account  of 
Justice  becomes  explicit  enough  when  Spencer  comes  to 
deal  with  the  problem  of  the  State.  In  spite  of  his  belief 
in  the  solidarity  of  the  interests  of  the  individual  and 
those  of  society,  and  his  persistent  use  of  the  term  *  social 
organism '  in.  Social  Statics^  the  antithesis  between  the 
State  and  the  individual  is  for  him  absolute.  His  jealousy 
of  State-interference  with  the  liberty  of  the  individual  is 
greater  even  v,han  Mill's.  The  State,  he  holds,  is  not  the 
creator  of  rig-ts  :  these  are  '  natural,'  and  the  State's  only 
legitimate  function  is  to  protect  them.  It  is  itself  a 
necessary  evill,  incidental  to  the  transitional  stage  which 
we  have  now'  reached  on  our  way  to  that  complete  harmony 
of  individual  find  social  interests  which  will  supersede  it. 

^  Quoted  in  Data  of  Ethics,  p.  123. 


296         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

We  are  *  advancing  from  the  one  extreme,  in  which  the 
State  is  everything  and  the  individual  nothing,  to  the 
other  extreme,  in  which  the  individual  is  everything  and 
the  State  nothing,'  ^  from  the  completely  military  to 
the  completely  industrial  type  of  social  organisation. 
The  State  is  indispensable  'during  man's  apprentice- 
ship to  the  social  state ' ;  and,  here  as  elsewhere,  fitness 
for  one  function  implies  unfitness  for  others.  But  not 
only  is  the  State  unfit  for  any  other  function  than  that 
of  protection,  its  attempt  to  do  more  is  an  interference 
with  nature  and  an  invasion  of  the  sacred  rights  of  the 
individual.  On  these  grounds  Spencer  condemns  the 
Poor-Law  and  National  Education,  as  well  as  all  inter- 
ferences with  religion  and  commerce.  That  he  did  not 
abate  the  rigour  of  these  views  in  later  life  is  seen  in 
the  essays  republished  from  the  Contemporary  Review 
under  the  title  The  Man  versus  the  State  (1884). 

Sufficient  quotations  have  been  given  to  enable  the 
reader  to  judge  of  the  merits  and  defects  of  Spencer's 
style.  Its  one  merit  is  its  clearness  and  precision  ;  to  this 
all  other  qualities  are  deliberately  sacrificed.  It  is  hard, 
technical,  dry,  entirely  lacking  in  distinction  and  indi- 
viduality. When  he  becomes  impassioned,  as  he  not 
seldom  does  when  dealing  with  a  practical  question,  he 
lapses  into  mere  popular  declamation,  and  the  effect  is 
decidedly  incongruous.  His  own  characterisation  of  his 
style  is  very  just.  *I  have  always  felt  a  wish  to  make 
both  the  greater  arguments,  and  the  smaller  arguments 
composing  them,  finished  and  symmetrical.  In  so  far  as 
giving  coherence  and  completeness  is  concerned,  I  have 
generally  satisfied  my  ambition  ;  but  I  have  fallen  short 
of  it  in  respect  of  literary  form.  The  aesthetic  sense  has 
in  this  always  kept  before  me  an  ideal  which  I  could 
never  reach.  Though  my  style  is  lucid,  it  has,  as 
compared  with  some  styles,  a  monotony  that  displeases 
me.     There  is  a  lack  of  variety  in  its  verbal  forms  and 

1  Social  Statics,  p.  435. 


HENRY   SIDGWICK  297 

in  its  larger  components,  and  there  is  a  lack  of  vigour  in 
its  phrases.'  ^ 

NOTE. 

t 

In  the  Methods  of  Ethics,  published  in  1874,  Henry 
Sidgwick  attempts  to  rationalise  Utilitarianism  by  basing 
it  upon  Intuitionism.  Distinguishing  carefully  between 
*  philosophical '  and  'dogmatic'  Intuitionism,  he  argues 
that  the  moral  laws  of  the  ordinary  conscience,  if  taken  as 
possessing  absolute  validity,  lead  to  confusion  and  mutual 
conflict.  Their  practical  is  no  measure  of  their  theoretical 
value  ;  and  Common  Sense  itself,  even  in  its  unreflective 
form,  does  not  attribute  to  them  absolute  validity,  but 
adopts  a  critical  and  utilitarian  attitude  towards  them, 
limiting  their  authority  by  a  consideration  of  the  con- 
sequences of  obedience  to  them.  This  implicit  utilitari- 
anism of  Common  Sense  suggests  that  the  real  conflict 
is  not  between  Intuitionism  and  Utilitarianism,  but  be- 
tween Intuitionism  and  Utilitarianism,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  Egoism,  the  third  *  method  of  ethics,'  on  the  other. 
In  Intuitionism,  philosophically  interpreted,  Sidgwick 
finds  the  rational  basis  which  is  lacking  in  the  Utili- 
tarianism of  Bentham  and  Mill.  The  three  ultimate  and 
self-evident  principles  which  ought  to  regulate  our  choices 
of  pleasure,  or  rather  of  the  objects  which  reflection 
finds  to  be  merely  means  to  pleasure, — the  ultimate  good, 
are  prudence,  benevolence,  and  justice,  dictating  strict 
impartiality  as  between  ourselves  and  others,  as  well  as 
between  the  several  parts  or  moments  of  our  own  in- 
dividual experience.  The  final  conflict  between  prudence 
and  benevolence,  between  the  claims  of  duty  and  those 
of  self-interest,  remains  an  insoluble  'duahsm  of  the 
practical  reason,'  necessitating  for  its  solution  the  theo- 
logical postulate  of  a  righteous  government  of  the  world, 
which  shall  compensate  the  individual  for  the  sacrifices 
he  has  made  in  his  devotion  to  duty. 

^  Autobiography,  ii.  451. 


CHAPTER   II 

THE  DEVELOPMENT  AND  CONSEQUENCES  OF 
THE  SCOTTISH  PHILOSOPHY  OF  COMMON 
SENSE 

I .  Natural  Realism  and  the  Relativity  of  Knowledge  : 
Hamilton  and  Mansel 

It  is  difficult  for  us  to  understand  the  extraordinary 
and,  we  cannot  but  judge,  exaggerated  reputation  which 
Hamilton  achieved  among  his  contemporaries  and  im- 
mediate successors.  That  reputation  has  been  finally 
discredited  for  us  by  Mill's  relentless  Examination  and 
Hutchison  Stirling's  still  more  caustic  Analysis  of  the 
Hamiltonian  philosophy.  But  apart  from  these  criticisms, 
the  actual  contribution  of  Hamilton  to  philosophy  is  so 
slight  that  it  fails  to  impress  the  present-day  reader.  It 
consists  of  two  series  of  class  lectures,  hastily  prepared 
during  the  first  years  of  his  tenure  of  the  chair  of  logic 
and  metaphysics  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  and 
re-delivered  year  after  year  without  revision  ;  of  a  few 
articles  contributed  to  ithe  Reviews ;  and  of  an  edition 
of  Reid  with  elaborate  notes  and  excursus.  So  far  as  the 
substance  of  his  philosophy  can  be  gathered  from  these 
scattered  sources,  all  that  he  really  added  to  the  accepted 
teaching  of  the  Scottish  school  was  the  doctrine  of  the 
Relativity  of  Human  Knowledge ;  and  it  is  doubtless  to 
his  enunciation  of  this  doctrine  and  the  subsequent 
development  of  it  by  other  thinkers  that  Hamilton's 
reputation  is  chiefly  due.  But  the  impression  which 
he  produced  upon  his  contemporaries  must  also  in  no 
small  measure  be  attributed  to  his  reputation  for  philo- 

298 


SIR   WILLIAM    HAMILTON         299 

sophical  erudition.  With  the  single  exception  of  Bacon, 
no  English  philosopher  before  his  time  had  produced 
this  impression  of  learning ;  with  the  single  exception 
of  Reid,  none  had  investigated  the  questions  of  philosophy 
in  the  light  of  the  history  of  their  previous  discussion. 
Mill  indeed  finds  in  *  the  enormous  amount  of  time  and 
mental  vigour  which  he  expended  on  mere  philosophical 
erudition,  leaving,  it  may  be  said,  only  the  remains  of  his 
mind  for  the  real  business  of  thinking,'  part  of  the  ex- 
planation of  Hamilton's  failure  to  contribute  more 
effectively  to  the  solution  of  philosophical  problems.-"^  Yet 
even  his  erudition  has  been  to  some  extent  discredited. 
Apart  from  errors  in  points  of  detail,  he  often  fails  entirely 
to  grasp  the  system  or  to  appreciate  the  point  of  view  of 
the  several  philosophers  to  whom  he  refers  ;  he  allows  him- 
self to  quote  isolated  statements,  apart  from  their  context 
in  the  system  as  a  whole.  Mill  thinks  that  Hamilton 
was  better  fitted  for  the  task  of  the  historian  of  philosophy 
than  for  that  of  philosophy  itself;  but  he  also  points  out 
that  the  gift  which  his  actual  work  in  this  field  displays 
is  rather  that  of  the  philosophic  annalist  than  that  of  the 
historian  proper.  Still  we  can  understand  that  Hamilton's 
extensive  and  minute  acquaintance  with  the  history  of 
philosophical  opinion  was  calculated  to  make  a  much 
greater  impression  upon  his  contemporaries,  to  whom  it 
was  something  new,  than  upon  those  who  have  been 
taught  a  higher  standard  of  scholarship  in  philosophy. 
Something  is  also  doubtless  to  be  set  down  to  his  ability 
in  the  presentation  of  his  views,  especially  in  a  polemical 
interest.  *  What  strength  and  nerve  in  his  style,'  remarks 
Masson.  It  is  true  that  his  style  is  much  more  technical 
than  that  of  previous  English  philosophers ;  but  this 
very  quality  may  well  have  helped  to  impress  his  con- 
temporaries with  the  scientific  accuracy  of  his  methods. 
Whatever  be  the  explanation,  the  fact  remains  that 
Hamilton  gave  a  new  and  a  strong  impulse  to  the  study 
of  philosophy  in  England  ;  and  it  is  rather  as  the  originator 

*  Examination  of  Hamilton,  p.  637. 


300         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

of  such  an  impulse  than  in  virtue  of  the  importance  of 
his  own  contributions  to  the  solution  of  its  problems  that 
his  significance  is  to  be  found. 

Hamilton's  quarrel  is  not  merely,  like  Reid's,  with  the 
scepticism  of  Hume  and  the  '  ideal '  or  *  representative ' 
theory  of  knowledge,  of  which  it  is  the  consequence, 
but  also  with  the  opposite  type  of  philosophy,  that 
absolute  idealism  or  *  omniscience '  which  the  German 
successors  of  Kant  have  developed  out  of  the  Kantian 
transcendentalism.  To  this  he  opposes  the  doctrine  of 
phenomenalism  or  relativism  which  he  regards  as  the 
true  development  of  the  '  critical '  philosophy.  But  he 
at  the  same  time  reasserts  Reid's  doctrine  of  Natural 
Realism  or  Dualism,  in  opposition  to  what  he  calls 
Cosmothetic  Idealism  or  Hypothetical  Realism.  Like 
Reid,  he  insists  upon  the  distinction  between  the  primary 
and  the  secondary  qualities,  regarding  the  former  as 
objectively  real  and  the  latter  as  subjective  modifications  ; 
like  Reid,  he  appeals  to  our  '  common  sense,'  or  immedi- 
ate *  consciousness '  both  of  the  ego  and  of  the  non-ego  ; 
like  Reid,  he  signalises  the  distinction  between  sensation 
and  perception.  So  far  as  this  side  of  his  philosophy  is 
concerned,  we  have  only  to  note  the  greater  clearness 
with  which  he  conceives  the  relation  of  philosophy  to 
common  sense  and  his  indebtedness,  even  in  this  part  of 
the  argument,  to  Kant.  *  Common  Sense,'  he  says,  *  is 
like  Common  Law.  Each  may  be  laid  down  as  the 
general  rule  of  decision  ;  but  in  the  one  case  it  must 
be  left  to  the  jurist,  in  the  other  to  the  philosopher,  to 
ascertain  what  are  the  contents  of  the  rule  ;  and  though 
in  both  instances  the  common  man  may  be  cited  as  a 
witness,  for  the  custom  or  the  fact,  in  neither  can  he  be 
allowed  to  officiate  as  advocate  or  as  judge.'*  This  is 
very  different  from  the  appeal,  so  frequent  in  Reid,  from 
the  philosophers  to  the  vulgar.  The  general  position  of 
Reid  is  further  greatly  modified  by  the  adoption  of  the 
Kantian  view  of  space  and  time  as  forms  of  perception  ^ 

'  Reid's  Works,  ii.  752. 

*  tlamilton  calls  them  inaccurately  'forms  of  thought' 


SIR   WILLIAM   HAMILTON         301 

and  of  the  general  Kantian  distinction  between  the 
conditions  and  the  results  of  experience,  between  the 
a  prioriy  or  necessary,  and  the  a  posteriori^  or  contingent 
element  in  experience. 

But  it  is  on  the  other  and  negative  side  of  the  Hamil- 
tonian  doctrine,  as  the  *  philosophy  of  the  conditioned,' 
that  the  influence  of  Kant  is  of  chief  importance.  The 
great  lesson  of  Kant,  as  Hamilton  conceives  it,  is  the 
lesson  of  our  ignorance,  complete  and  incurable,  of  ultimate 
reality.  The  implication  of  that  '  Copernican  change  of 
standpoint '  which  is  the  decisive  factor  in  the  Kantian 
theory  of  knowledge  is  that  since,  to  be  known,  things 
must  conform  to  the  knowing  mind  and  its  ways  of  know- 
ledge, they  can  never  be  known  as  they  are  in  themselves, 
apart  from  the  mind.  To  know  is  to  relate  things  to  the 
mind  ;  it  follows  that  the  unrelated  thing,  the  thing-in- 
itself,  can  never  be  known.  We  know  only  phenomena ; 
that  is,  we  do  not,  in  the  strict  sense,  know  at  all.  The 
knowing  subject,  in  the  very  act  of  knowing,  weaves  a 
veil  which  hides  from  its  sight  the  object  as  it  truly  is  : 
what  we  know  is  the  subjective  object,  not  the  object  as 
it  is  in  itself.  When  we  seek  to  know  ourselves,  we  are 
involved  in  the  same  fatal  circle  of  subjectivity  and  ap- 
pearance ;  we  know  even  ourselves  only  as  we  appear  to 
ourselves,  not  as  we  are  in  ourselves.  Hamilton  identifies 
this  agnosticism  of  Kant  with  the  Lockian  doctrine  of  the 
inscrutability  of  substance,  material  and  spiritual  :  in  both 
cases  alike  we  know  only  the  qualities,  not  the  real  sub- 
stance. '  Mind  and  matter,  as  known  or  knowable,  are  only 
two  different  series  of  phenomena  or  qualities  ;  mind  and 
matter,  as  unknown  and  unknowable,  are  the  two  sub- 
stances in  which  these  two  different  series  of  phasnomena 
or  qualities  are  supposed  to  inhere.  The  existence  of  an 
unknown  substance  is  only  an  inference  we  are  compelled 
to  make  from  the  existence  of  known  phasnomena  ;  and 
the  distinction  of  two  substances  is  only  inferred  from  the 
seeming  incompatibility  of  the  two  series  of  phaenomena 
to  coinhere  in  one.'^     The  source  of   our  ignorance  is 

^  Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  i.  138. 


302         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

not  so  much  the  h'mitation  of  our  faculties  as  the  nature 
of  knowledge  itself.  *  Were  the  number  of  our  faculties 
coextensive  with  the  modes  of  being — had  we  for  each 
of  these  thousand  modes  a  separate  organ  competent  to 
make  it  known  to  us — still  would  our  whole  knowledge 
be,  as  it  is  at  present,  only  of  the  relative.  Of  existence 
absolutely  and  in  itself,  we  should  then  be  as  ignorant 
as  we  are  now.'* 

Mill  and  others  find  in  this  doctrine  of  Agnosticism 
the  contradiction  of  Hamilton's  own  theory  of  Natural 
Realism ;  but  though  Hamilton's  statements  can  easily 
be  made  to  contradict  one  another,  Masson's  surmise  is 
doubtless  the  true  one,  namely,  that  the  theory  of  Natural 
Realism  refers  only  to  phenomenal  or  *  cosmological '  reality, 
and  is  not  therefore  contradicted  by  the  doctrine  of  the 
unknowableness  of  ultimate  or  '  ontological '  reality.  The 
real  difficulty  in  the  latter  theory  lies  in  the  underlying 
conception  of  ultimate  reality  as  the  unconditioned,  or 
unrelated,  a  conception  which  Hamilton  develops  with 
great  explicitness  in  the  article  on  *  The  Philosophy  of  the 
Unconditioned.'  Since  to  think  is  to  condition,  we  cannot, 
he  argues,  know  the  Unconditioned.  Whenever  we  make 
the  attempt,  we  find  that  we  have  to  choose  between  two 
contradictory  propositions,  both  inconceivable,  of  which, 
according  to  the  principle  of  excluded  middle,  one  must  be 
true.  The  unconditioned  is  either  the  Absolute  or  the 
Infinite,  the  unconditionally  limited  or  the  unconditionally 
unlimited.  Which  of  these  contradictories  is  true,  we 
are  in  certain  cases  able,  in  other  cases  unable,  to  deter- 
mine. In  any  case,  for  Hamilton  as  for  Kant,  the  ground 
of  decision  between  the  contradictory  alternatives  is  a 
moral  one.  For  example,  the  fact  of  moral  responsibility 
compels  us  to  decide  in  favour  of  a  first  cause  or  absolute 
beginning  of  our  own  actions,and  against  an  infinite  series  of 
causes.  The  absence  of  such  grounds  of  decision  between 
the  rival  interpretations  of  God,  as  the  Unconditioned, 
condemns  us  to  complete  ignorance  of  the  divine  nature. 

*  Lectures  on  Metaphysics,  i.  153. 


HENRY   MANSEL  303 

Hamilton  concludes,  with  Kant,  that  where  knowledge  is 
unattainable,  belief  is  both  possible  and  necessary  ;  but 
instead  of  constructing,  like  Kant,  a  moral  theology  or  a 
metaphysic  of  ethics,  he  trusts  to  Common  Sense  and 
Intuition,  aided  by  supernatural  Revelation,  to  assure  us  of 
those  truths  which  lie  beyond  the  sphere  of  knowledge. 

The  title  of  Mansel's  famous  Bampton  Lectures  (1858), 

*  The  Limits  of  Religious  Thought,'  indicates  the  leading 
interest  of  the  author  in  the  Hamiltonian  '  philosophy 
of  the  conditioned,'  namely,  its  theological  implications. 
He  sets  himself  to  undermine  the  rationalistic  criticism 
of  revealed  theology  by  showing  that  the  philosophy 
of  the  Infinite,  on  which  it  rests,  is  unattainable  by 
man,  whose  knowledge  is,  by  its  very  nature,  limited 
to    the  finite.     The  true  theology,  he  argues,  is  merely 

*  regulative  '  and  practical,  '  not  *  speculative  '  or  scientific. 
Religious  intuition  or  instinct,  belief  as  distinguished 
from  knowledge,  is  the  organ  by  which  we  apprehend 
God  and  our  relation  to  Him.  Our  feeling  of  dependence 
suggests  to  us  the  power,  our  conviction  of  moral  obliga- 
tion the  goodness,  of  God.  Thus  we  form  *  regulative 
ideas  of  the  Deity,  which  are  sufficient  to  guide  our 
practice,  but  not  to  satisfy  our  intellect ;  which  tell  us, 
not  what  God  is  in  Himself,  but  how  He  wills  that 
we  should  think  of  Him.'^  Mansel  follows  Butler  in 
his  contention  that  the  divine  government  of  the  world  is 

*  a  scheme  imperfectly  comprehended,'  and  argues  that  we 
must  be  content  with  the  apprehension  of  the  analogy 
of  the  divine  nature  to  our  own,  where  knowledge  in 
the  strict  sense  is  beyond  our  reach.  We  must  rest 
satisfied  with  *  the  convictions  forced  upon  us  by  our 
religious  and  moral  instincts.'  ^  These  convictions  are 
at  once  incapable  of  rational  justification  and  superior 
to  it. 

Mansel's  argument  for  the  limitation  of  human  know- 
ledge to  the  finite  is  essentially  the  same  as  that  of  Hamil- 

^  Limits  of  Religious  Thought^  p.  84.  *  Metaphysics,  p.  375. 


304         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

ton,  but  it  is  more  clearly  stated  and  somewhat  expanded. 
He  abandons  Hamilton's  view  of  the  opposition  of  the 
absolute  and  the  infinite,  and  finds  the  idea  of  the  absolute 
to  be  not  only  inconceivable  but  self-contradictory.  *  In 
my  language  absolute  is  not  opposed  to  incomplete^  but 
to  relative,  and  means  knowledge  of  an  object  as  it 
is  in  itself,  apart  from  its  relation  to  human  faculties.'^ 
Hence  *a  conception  of  the  Deity,  in  His  absolute 
existence,  appears  to  involve  a  self-contradiction  ;  for 
conception  itself  is  a  limitation,  and  a  conception  of  the 
absolute  Deity  is  a  limitation  of  the  illimitable.'^  Con- 
ception or  consciousness  implies  not  merely,  as  Hamilton 
had  argued,  the  relation  of  subject  and  object,  but  the 
distinction  of  one  object  from  another,  the  succession 
and  duration  of  these  objects  in  time,  and  the  attribution 
of  spiritual  qualities  to  a  common  subject  or  person. 
In  all  these  respects  a  conception  of  the  infinite  is  a 
contradiction  in  terms.  Even  the  moral  consciousness 
is  limited  to  the  relative,  and  acquaints  us  only  with 
appearance,  not  with  reality.  *  If  the  standard  of  perfect 
and  immutable  morality  is  to  be  found  only  in  the  eternal 
nature  of  God,  it  follows  that  those  conditions  which 
prevent  man  from  attaining  to  a  knowledge  of  the  infinite, 
as  such,  must  also  prevent  him  from  attaining  to  more 
than  a  relative  and  phenomenal  conception  of  morality.'  ^ 
*  What  that  Absolute  Morality  is,  we  are  as  unable 
to  fix  in  any  human  conception,  as  we  are  to  define 
the  other  attributes  of  the  same  Divine  Nature.'*  It 
follows  that  such  a  criticism  of  Revelation  from  the 
ethical  point  of  view  as  we  find  in  Kant,  implying  as 
it  does  the  Kantian  view  of  the  absolute  significance 
of  our  human  morality,  is  entirely  without  warrant, 
and  that  we  must  accept  without  question  the  'moral 
miracles'  of  Revelation.  Elsewhere,  however,  Mansel 
seems  to  substitute  for  this  strictly  relativistic  view  of 
human   morality  an  interpretation   of  ethical  knowledge 

1  Limits  of  Religious  KtunaUdge  (Pref.  to  4th  ed.),  p.  xxx,  note. 

2  Metaphysics,  p.  298.  '  Ibid.,  p.  386. 
*  Limits  of  Religious  Thought,  p.  135. 


AGNOSTICISM  305 

as  merely  incomplete.  '  Each  principle  of  this  kind,' 
he  says,  *  recommends  itself  to  the  minds  of  all  who 
are  capable  of  reflecting  upon  it,  as  true  and  irreversible 
so  far  as  it  goes  ;  though  it  may  represent  but  a  limited 
portion  of  the  truth,  and  be  hereafter  merged  in  some 
higher  and  more  comprehensive  formula.'^  He  departs, 
too,  from  the  Hamiltonian  doctrine  at  one  notable  point, 
admitting  that,  in  spite  of  the  impossibility  of  transcending 
the  limits  of  consciousness,  *  the  self  of  consciousness 
is  the  true  self.'^  *In  Psychology  it  cannot  in  any 
sense  be  maintained  that  the  real  is  that  of  which  we 
are  not  conscious.  My  own  consciousness  is  not  merely 
the  test  of  my  real  existence,  but  it  actually  constitutes 
it.' 3  The  self,  that  is  to  say,  is  not,  like  other  realities, 
an  unknown  substance  which  must  be  apprehended  apart 
from  its  qualities,  if  it  is  to  be  known  at  all ;  personality 
is  the  one  exception  to  the  law  of  the  inevitableness 
of  human  nescience.  But  the  theological  consequences 
of  this  exception  are  not  developed  by  Mansel  either 
in  his  Metaphysics  or  in  his  Bampton  lectures. 


2.  Agnosticism  :  Spencer  and  Huxley 

In  the  agnosticism  of  Herbert  Spencer  we  find  the 
doctrine  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge,  as  proclaimed  by 
Hamilton  and  Mansel,  followed  out  to  its  extreme  logical 
consequences,  without  any  ulterior  purpose  of  defending 
religious  truth  from  the  attacks  of  rationalism.  Spencer, 
it  is  true,  seeks,  in  the  opening  Book  of  his  First  Principles, 
to  reconcile  not  only  the  various  rival  religions  with  one 
another,  but  also  religion  itself  with  science  ;  but  the  very 
catholicity  of  his  interest  in  religion,  his  complete  indif- 
ference to  the  special  claims  of  Christianity,  clearly 
differentiates  his  enterprise  from  that  of  those  who  would 
magnify  faith  by  belittling  reason.  In  the  doctrine  of  the 
unknowableness  of  ultimate  reality  he  finds  the  principle 

p.  388.  «  Ibid.,  p.  368 

V 


1  Metaphysics,  p.  388. 
3  Ibid.,  pp.  354-5. 


3o6  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

of  reconciliation  which  he  is  seeking.  'If  Religion  and 
Science  are  to  be  reconciled,  the  basis  of  reconciliation 
must  be  this  deepest,  widest,  and  most  certain  of  all 
facts — that  the  Power  which  the  Universe  manifests  to 
us  is  utterly  inscrutable.'  ^  The  ultimate  consequence 
of  our  scientific,  no  less  than  of  our  religious  thought, 
is  self-contradiction  and  the  sense  of  utter  mystery. 
Suppose  the  work  of  science  completed,  suppose  '  the 
appearances,  properties,  and  movements  of  things'  to  have 
been  resolved  into  *  manifestations  of  Force  in  Space  and 
Time,'  it  would  still  remain  that  '  Force,  Space,  and 
Time  pass  all  understanding.'  Thus  the  scientific  thinker 
*  learns  at  once  the  greatness  and  the  littleness  of  the 
human  intellect — its  power  in  dealing  with  all  that 
comes  within  the  range  of  experience  ;  its  impotence  in 
dealing  with  all  that  transcends  experience.  He  realises 
with  a  special  vividness  the  utter  incomprehensibleness 
of  the  simplest  fact,  considered  in  itself.  He,  more 
than  any  other,  truly  knows  that  in  its  ultimate  essence 
nothing  can  be  known.' ^  The  inevitable  inference 
from  this  universal  failure  to  think  out  our  conceptions, 
whether  religious  or  scientific,  is  the  merely  symbolic 
value  of  our  so-called  *  knowledge.'  *  Ultimate  religious 
ideas  and  ultimate  scientific  ideas,  alike  turn  out  to  be 
merely  symbols  of  the  actual,  not  cognitions  of  it.'  ^ 
But  while  the  only  defensible  philosophy  is  that  which 
confines  itself  to  the  investigation  of  the  laws  or  uni- 
formities which  characterise  the  phenomena  to  which 
our  knowledge  is  limited,  while  philosophy  differs 
from  science  merely  as  completely  unified  from  partially 
unified  knowledge  of  phenomena,  and  transcendental 
notions  have  no  role  to  play  in  philosophic  thought,  there 
remains,  as  the  basis  of  religious  emotion,  the  indefinite 
consciousness,  rather  than  the  thought  or  idea,  of  the 
unknowable  Reality  which  lies  behind  the  phenomena 
of  our  experience,  *  an  indefinite  consciousness  of  the 
unformed    and  unlimited,'  *   a    compelling   sense    of  the 

^  First  Principles,  p.  46.  •  Ibid.,  pp.  66,  67. 

■  Ibid.,  p.  68.  *  Ibid.,  p.  94. 


AGNOSTICISM  307 

ultimate  mysteriousness  of  the  universe  in  which  we  find 
ourselves. 

Huxley,  to  whom  we  owe  the  invention  of  the  name 

*  agnosticism '  as  the  antithesis  of  *  gnosticism,'  finds  the 
doctrine  itself  alike  in  Hume  and  Kant,  though  he  learned 
it  first  from  Hamilton.'^  *The  aim  of  the  Kritik  der 
reinen  Vernunft  is  essentially  the  same  as  that  of  the 
Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  by  which  indeed  Kant  was 
led  to  develop  that  "  critical  philosophy  "  with  which  his 
name  and  fame  are  indisputably  bound  up  :  and,  if  the 
details  of  Kant's  criticism  differ  from  those  of  Hume,  they 
coincide  with  them  in  their  main  result,  which  is  the 
limitation  of  all  knowledge  of  reality  to  the  world  of 
phenomena  revealed  to  us  by  experience.'  ^  But  it  is  in 
the  '  mitigated  scepticism '  or  *■  academical  philosophy  '  of 

*  that  prince  of  agnostics,  David  Hume,'  rather  even  than 
in  the  Critical  Philosophy  of  Kant,  that  he  finds  the 
classical  statement  oF  agnosticism  ;  and  this  interpretation 
determines  the  entire  presentation  of  Hume's  philosophy 
in  the  notable  volume  which  he  contributed  to  the 
'  English  Men  of  Letters '  series. 

While  the  name  *  agnosticism '  is  a  novelty  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and  the  doctrine  of  nescience  which 
it  signifies  is  based  by  its  advocates  upon  the  results  of 
Humian  and  Kantian  speculation,  as  interpreted  by 
Hamilton  and  Mansel,  the  doctrine  itself  is  no  novelty 
of  the  century.  It  is  that  doctrine  of  inverted  empiricism 
with  which  we  have  already  become  familiar  in  the  pages 
of  Locke's  Essay  and  with  which  Huxley  explicitly  con- 
nects his  own  teaching.  Since  experience  is  the  only 
source  from  which  the  data  of  knowledge  can  be  de- 
rived, it  seems  to  Locke,  as  to  Kant,  to  follow  that  we 
cannot  know  that  which  transcends  experience,  and  there- 
fore that  we  cannot  know  ultimate  reality.  Locke's 
unknown    and    unknowable    'substance'    corresponds    to 

*  See    Essay   on   '  Agnosticism '   in    Essays  on   Some    Controverted 
Questions  y  p.  35;?. 
^  Hume,  in  '  English  Men  of  Letters,'  p.  60. 


3o8  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Kant's  unknown  and  unknowable  *  thing-in-itself.'  As 
Kant  says  that  we  know  '  only  phenomena  '  or  appearances, 
Locke  says  that  we  know  *  only  qualities ' ;  essential  and 
substantial  being  we  cannot  know.  For  us  reality, 
whether  in  Nature  or  in  ourselves,  must  remain  a  mere 

*  something,'  '  we  know  not  what.'  All  that  was  left  for 
the  agnostics  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  do  was  to 
extend  this  view  of  the  inscrutableness  of  reality  to  our 
knowledge  of  God,  that  is,  to  deduce  the  theological 
consequences  which  Locke  had  failed  to  draw  from 
the  general  view  of  human  knowledge  which  he  had  so 
emphatically  stated. 

3.  Return  to  the  Characteristic  Point  of  View  of  Scottish 
Philosophy  :  Calderwoody  Martineau^  Fraser 

It  was  doubtless  the  development  of  Hamilton's  doctrine 
of  Relativity  by  Mansel  and  Spencer  that  revealed  to  his 
ablest  pupils  the  perilous  inadequacies  of  the  Philosophy 
of  the  Conditioned,  and  stimulated  them  to  attempt  the 
revision  and  correction  of  their  master's  theory  of  know- 
ledge. The  first  sign  of  revolt  was  the  publication  of 
The  Philosophy  of  the  Infinite^  by  Henry  Calderwood, 
afterwards  professor  of  moral  philosophy  at  Edinburgh 
and  a  strenuous  defender  of  intuitional  ethics.  In  this 
work  he  contended  that  a  *  negative  notion '  was  '  no 
notion  at  all,'  but  a  '  mental  impossibility,'  and  that  the 
removal  of  limitations  does  not  annihilate  the  object  of 
knowledge,  though  it  may  make  it  indefinite.     Hamilton's 

*  Infinite '  is  *  a  mere  abstraction  for  which  no  one  pleads 
either  in  existence  or  in  thought.'  We  may  have  a  finite 
or  incomplete,  yet  real,  knowledge  of  an  infinite  object. 
Nor  is  it  possible  to  believe  in  that  which  we  cannot 
conceive,  that  is,  in  some  measure  know.  As  to  Hamilton's 
charge  of  *  imbecility '  against  our  faculties  of  knowledge, 
Calderwood  asks,  in  the  spirit  of  Ferrier,  *  Does  it  prove 
weakness  of  mind  that  we  cannot  think  nothing  ?  What  a 
power  of  mind  it  would  be  to  be  able  to  think  nothing — to 
think  and  yet  not  to  think  ! ' 


THE   SCOTTISH   PHILOSOPHY      309 

Calderwood's  concern  was  exclusively  with  the  theo- 
logical aspect  of  the  Hamilton ian  theory.  It  was  reserved 
for  Hamilton's  successor  in  the  chair  of  logic  and  meta- 
physics at  Edinburgh,  Alexander  Campbell  Fraser,  who 
had  also  come  under  the  influence  of  the  great  teacher, 
to  develop  a  philosophy  of  his  own  on  lines  more  charac- 
teristic of  the  Scottish  Philosophy  than  those  which 
Hamilton  himself  had  followed,  to  interpret  and  explain 
the  very  doctrine  of  Nescience  in  a  new  way  and  to  deduce 
from  it  consequences  very  diflferent  from  those  above 
described.  Another  thinker,  slightly  Eraser's  senior,  and 
though  not  a  pupil  of  Hamilton,  yet  closely  allied  to  the 
Scottish  School  in  the  tendencies  of  his  thought  and 
following  indeed  more  closely  the  traditional  lines  of  that 
school,  is  too  impressive  to  be  overlooked — James  Mar- 
tineau,  for  many  years  principal  and  professor  in  Man- 
chester New  College  (now  Manchester  College,  Oxford), 
and  author  of  Types  of  Ethical  Theory  and  A  Study  of 
Religion. 

Both  Martineau  and  Fraser,  following  the  lead  of 
Hamilton,  subordinate  the  cosmological  to  the  ontological 
and  theological  problem.  Both  insist  upon  the  ethical 
aspect  of  Reality,  or  upon  the  reality  of  the  ethical 
element  in  human  experience,  and  its  validity  as  affording 
the  clue  to  the  nature  of  God  or  ultimate  Reality.  The 
philosophy  of  both  is  an  ethical  theism,  as  opposed  alike 
to  an  unethical  atheism  and  to  an  unethical  pantheism. 
Both  contend  for  a  spiritual  interpretation  of  the  universe, 
and  find  the  key  to  the  nature  of  the  divine  Spirit  in  the 
human.  For  both  man  is  the  measure  of  reality,  but  the 
whole  man,  the  complete  human  personality,  on  its  ethical 
as  well  as  on  its  intellectual  side.  It  is  in  this  insistence 
upon  the  ethical  element  in  the  universe,  as  revealed  in 
human  experience,  not  less  than  in  their  insistence  upon 
the  validity  of  human  knowledge,  in  spite  of  its  inevitable 
incompleteness  or  finiteness,  that  these  thinkers  together 
represent  the  return  to  the  more  characteristic  point  of 
view  of  the  Scottish  Philosophy. 

Martineau,  as  I  have  said,  follows  much  more  closely 


3IO         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

than  Fraser  the  traditional  lines  of  the  Scottish  School ; 
he  is  distinctly  the  less  original  and  speculative  thinker. 
This  is  true  both  of  his  metaphysical  and  of  his  ethical 
theory.  In  the  former  he  reproduces  the  Natural 
Realism  or  Natural  Dualism  of  Reid  and  Hamilton  ;  in  the 
latter  he  restates  the  Intuitionism  of  the  school,  with  an 
interesting  modification.  Fraser,  on  the  other  hand,  has 
been  too  profoundly  influenced  by  that  '  ideal  theory ' 
which  was  the  bete  noire  of  Reid,  to  attach  much  import- 
ance to  the  question  of  the  independent  reality  of  the 
material  world ;  his  interest  is  in  *  spiritual  realism ' 
rather  than  in  *  natural  realism.'  The  consequence  is 
that,  while  Martineau  finds  speculative  satisfaction  in  a 
theory  which  shares  the  defects  of  the  old  mechanical 
and  deistic  theology  of  the  eighteenth  century,  Fraser, 
under  the  combined  influences  of  Coleridge  and  Berkeley, 
finds  himself  compelled  to  recognise  the  element  of 
truth  in  the  pantheistic  theory,  and  to  admit  the  im- 
manence of  God  in  the  universe,  in  nature  as  well  as  in 
man.  While  both  alike  find  pantheism  finally  unsatis- 
factory, and  on  the  same  ethical  grounds,  Martineau's 
philosophy  is  simply  a  revised  version  of  the  Natural 
Realism  and  the  Natural  Theology  of  the  earlier  Scottish 
philosophers,  Fraser's  is  a  moral  idealism,  a  new  philo- 
sophy of  theism  which  has  shaped  for  itself  a  via  media 
between  the  deism  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the 
pantheism  of  the  nineteenth. 

In  two  early  essays,  on  *Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Philo- 
sophy' (1853),  and  on  'Mansel's  Limits  of  Religious 
Thought'  (1859),  Martineau  clearly  expressed  his  dissent 
from  the  doctrine  of  Nescience  as  held  by  both  Hamilton 
and  Mansel.  Of  Hamilton's  Maw  of  the  conditioned,' 
he  says  :  *  What  is  this  but  the  morbid  lament  of  scepti- 
cism ?  Faith  in  the  veracity  of  our  faculties,  if  it  means 
anything,  requires  us  to  believe  that  things  are  as  they 
appear — that  is,  appear  to  the  mind  in  the  last  and  highest 
resort ;  and  to  deal  with  the  fact  that  they  only  appear  as 
if  it  constituted  an  eternal  exile  from  their  reality  is  to 


JAMES   MARTINEAU  311' 

attribute  lunacy  to  universal  reason.' ^  To  Mansel's 
view,  again,  he  pertinently  objects, '  If  intelligence  consists 
in  distinguishing,  how^  can  distinguishing  be  an  incompe- 
tency to  understand  ? '  ^  Mansel's  theory  of  know^ledge 
*  cuts  away  the  only  supports  on  which  religious  thought 
can  rest  or  move  ;  and  nothing  short  of  an  unqualified 
ontological  scepticism  is  in  agreement  with  his  pre- 
misses.' 3 

Martineau  reached  his  own  position  in  philosophy  by 
way  of  reaction  from  the  sensationalism  and  association  ism 
in  which,  in  its  extreme  Priestleyan  form,  he  had  been 
educated.  Though  he  at  first  accepted  this  view  without 
question,  and  even  taught  it  for  some  years,  further  re- 
flection convinced  him  that  it  was  invalidated  by  the  facts 
of  our  moral  experience  and  by  the  principle  of  causality, 
truly  understood.  Moral  responsibility  implies  freedom, 
as  opposed  to  the  necessity  of  Priestley  ;  conscience  im- 
plies the  obligatoriness  of  right  conduct  and,  therefore, 
the  existence  of  a  righteous  Will  to  impose  this  obligation 
upon  us.  Further,  causation  is  not  synonymous  with 
necessary  succession  ;  the  only  cause  we  know  is  will, 
or  moral  agency.  It  follows  that  God,  as  the  ukimate 
or  first  Cause,  is  Will.  This  conception  of  God  as 
supreme  Will,  at  once  the  Creator  of  the  world  and 
the  sovereign  Law-giver,  was  more  sharply  accentuated 
by  Martineau's  later  opposition  to  absolute  idealism,  which 
he  identified  with  pantheism  and  in  which  he  saw  a 
menace  to  the  ethical  life  no  less  serious  than  the  sensa- 
tionalism and  determinism  which  in  his  youth  had 
chiefly  threatened  its  interests.  The  citadel  of  morality 
he  finds  in  the  freedom  of  the  human  will ;  and  this  seems 
to  him  to  imply  the  falsity  not  only  of  the  identification 
of  the  self  with  the  character,  but  also  of  a  doctrine  of 
the  immanence  of  God  in  man  and  in  nature  which  ex- 
cludes His  transcendence.  In  the  ethical  field  itself  the 
doctrine  of  Utilitarianism  seems  to  him  to  explain  away, 
rather  than  to  explain,  the  central  fact  of  moral  obligation  ; 

^  Essays,  iii.  481.  2  j/jij,^  jii.  135,  s  Ibid.,  iii.  133. 


312         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

and  his  own  ethical  theory  differs  from  the  old  Intuitionism 
simply   in   the  stress  which   it  lays  upon   the  motive  or 

*  spring,'  as  distinguished  from  the  action,  and  upon  the 
preferability  of  a  higher  to  a  lower  spring,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  rightness  or  wrongness  of  any  single 
action  or  motive,  in  itself,  and  as  such. 

We  may  well  doubt,  with  R.  H.  Hutton,  his  pupil  and 
friend,  *  whether  the  historian  of  the  English  thought  of 
our  time  will  credit  Martineau  with  any  distinct  modifi- 
cation of  the  theological  or  philosophical  opinions  of  this 
age.'  His  teaching,  Hutton  adds,  was  *  something  that 
went  below  opinion  ;  it  was  a  revelation  of  spiritual 
character  and  power.  That  was  the  impressive  thing  in 
James  Martineau.'  ^  It  is  this  that  impresses  his  readers,  as 
it  impressed  his  pupils — the  personality  of  the  writer  rather 
than  the  substance  of  his  thought.  It  is  in  his  religious 
rather  than  in  his  philosophical  writings,  we  must  again 
agree  with  Hutton,  that  '  the  real  Martineau,  the  spiritual 
teacher  who  will  endure,  has  accomplished  his  greatest 
and  finest  work.'  His  influence  and  popularity  must  be 
attributed,  in  no  small  measure,  to  his  gift  of  style. 
Hutton  calls  it  *a  singularly  noble  and  remarkable  prose 
style.'  But  it  is  more  appropriate  to  the  sermon  than 
to  the  philosophical  treatise ;  it  is  much  too  ornate, 
figurative,  and  rhetorical  for  the  latter.  Its  wealth  of 
imagery,   its  very    brilliance,  are  apt  to    pall ;    even    its 

*  dignity  '  is  sometimes  oppressive  ;  and  it  is  fatally  diffuse. 
Yet  it  is  characteristic,  and  a  revelation  of  a  nature 
touched  to  fine  issues,  of  an  eloquent  preacher  rather  than 
an  original  thinker. 

The  influences  which  have  chiefly  determined  the 
philosophy  of  Fraser  are  the  views  of  Locke  and  Berkeley 
rather  than  those  of  the  Scottish  School.  His  sympathies 
are  with  the  Baconian  and  Lockian  spirit  of  faithfulness,  at 
all  costs,  to  the  concrete  facts  of  human  experience  rather 
than  with  the  Continental  ambition  to  construct  a  com- 

'  Spectator,  Jan.  27,  1900.        > 


CAMPBELL   FRASER  313 

pletely  articulated  system  such  as  we  find  in  the  absolute 
idealism*  of  Hegel.  'My  inclination,'  he  tells  us,  *was 
to  an  English  manner  of  treatment,  so  far  as  it  keeps 
firm  hold  of  what  is  given  in  concrete  experience,  under 
conditions  of  place  and  time,  and  refuses  to  pursue  a  unity 
that  is  possible  for  men  only  in  a  world  of  abstractions.'  ^ 
As  the  author  of  the  classical  editions  of  Berkeley's  Works 
and  of  Locke's  Essay^  he  could  not  fail  to  assimilate  the 
English  philosophical  tradition,  alike  on  its  empirical  and 
on  its  idealistic  side.  Deeply  impressed  by  Hume's  scepti- 
cal reduction  of  the  Lockian  philosophy,  he  has  grasped 
the  significance  of  Hume  for  the  past  and  the  future  of 
philosophy  far  more  thoroughly  than  either  Reid  or 
Hamilton  had  done.  Of  the  Scottish  philosophers,  apart 
from  Hamilton,  the  one  who  most  nearly  influenced  him 
was  Thomas  Brown,  whose  thought  is  much  more  akin 
to  the  scepticism  of  Hume  than  to  the  Natural  Realism  of 
Reid.  It  was  Brown's  account  of  the  nature  of  causation 
that  seems  to  have  first  awakened  his  interest  in  the  ulti- 
mate questions  of  philosophy.  *I  was  for  a  time  fasci- 
nated,' he  says,  '  by  the  simplicity  of  Brown's  superficial 
explanation.  I  had  been  wont  to  suppose  that  a  "  cause  " 
meant  a  mysterious  something,  also  called  "  power,"  some- 
how contained  within  things,  but  distinct  from  the  visible 
things  in  which  it  was  believed  to  reside.  .  .  .  Brown's 
analysis  dissolved  this  conception  as  an  illusion.  The 
"  powers "  of  things,  he  argued,  must  be  the  very  things 
themselves  which  we  see  and  feel ;  these,  however,  only 
when  looked  at  as  the  invariable  antecedents  of  changes 
which,  under  given  conditions,  make  their  appearance, 
and  which  we  call  "  effects  "  of  the  antecedents.  Causa- 
tion, in  short,  is  a  relation  of  constant  sequence,  under 
which  one  group  of  phenomena  is  transformed  into  an- 
other group.'  *  Deeper  reflection,  however,  revealed  the 
unsatisfactoriness  of  this  view  :  it  left  unexplained  the 
uniformity  or  constancy  of  the  causal  series  which  yet  it 
presupposed.     '  So    Brown's  supposed  world   of  constant 

'  Biographia  Philosophica,  p.  138.  Ibid.^  pp.  48,  49. 


314         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

orderly  antecedence  and  consequence  gradually  gave  rise 
to  a  mood  of  universal  uncertainty.  The  very  tie  which 
makes  the  universe  a  universe  seemed  to  be  loosed.  .  .  . 
Through  Brown's  dissolving  view  of  causation,  I  seemed 
bound  to  surrender  to  the  total  doubt  of  Hume,  and  the 
last  chapter  of  Hume's  Treatise  described  the  situation.'^ 
It  was  in  Berkeley's  conception  of  causation  or  power  as, 
in  the  strict  sense,  spiritual  or  the  expression  of  will,  that 
Fraser  found  deliverance  from  the  scepticism  which  had 
resulted  from  an  exclusive  consideration  of  its  physical  and 
scientific  aspects.  Berkeley  taught  him  that  physical  causes 
were  really  but  signs,  and  that  real  causes  or  powers  were 
spiritual,  the  expression  of  spiritual  purpose.  The  further 
problem  raised  by  the  necessity  of  presupposing  uniformity 
in  the  world  of  natural  events  remained  for  later  solution 
in  connexion  with  the  question  raised  for  him  by  Hamilton, 
that  of  the  nature  and  limits  of  human  knowledge.  But 
the  substitution  of  the  Berkeleyan  for  the  Humian  con- 
ception of  causation  rendered  conceivable  the  divine  im- 
manence in  the  world  of  natural  phenomena,  or  the 
*  supernatural '  character  of  *  nature ' ;  and  the  mere  Im- 
materialism  which  was  all  that  had  hitherto  been  discovered 
in  Berkeley  became  clearly  subordinate  in  importance  to 
the  'spiritual  realism '  which  his  account  of  causation  was 
seen  to  imply. 

Eraser's  central  and  ever-recurring  question,  discussed 
tentatively  in  the  Introductions  and  Notes  to  Berkeley  and 
Locke,  as  well  as  in  the  volumes  devoted  to  the  life  and 
thought  of  these  philosophers,  and  finally  in  the  Gifford 
lectures  on  *  The  Philosophy  of  Thesim,'  is  the  Hamil- 
tonian  question  of  the  nature  and  limits  of  knowledge, 
deepened  and  widened  as  seen  in  the  light  of  the  scepticism 
of  Hume.  In  an  essay  on  '  The  Insoluble  Problem,'  in  the 
North  British  Review  (1854),  he  *  pondered  over  this 
supreme  part  of  Hamilton's  philosophy.'  The  article  ex- 
pressed a  somewhat  critical  attitude  towards  the  Philosophy 
of  the  Conditioned.     *An  exhaustive  explanation  of  the 

*  Biographia  Philosophica,  p.  51. 


CAMPBELL   ERASER  315 

mysteries  in  the  Divine  Reality  seemed  possible  only  in 
Omniscience  ;  but  man  is  not  and  cannot  become  om- 
niscient. Yet  this  intellectual  helplessness  was  not  incon- 
sistent with  a  progressive  human  knowledge  of  the  Active 
Reason  that  is  (so  far)  revealed  in  all  the  facts  and  laws  of 
the  physical  and  spiritual  universe.'^  'So-called  human 
knowledge,  being  at  last  necessarily  incomplete  and  in- 
completable,  may  be  called  knowledge  or  ignorance, 
according  to  the  way  in  which  it  is  looked  at,  and  the 
meaning  associated  with  these  two  terms.'  ^  In  another 
early  essav,  on  '  Scottish  Metaphysics,'  wc  find  Fraser 
suggesting  '  the  value  of  some  more  precise  and  available 
canon  of  conciliatory  criticism,  than  the  mere  proclamation 
oi human  ignorance  concQxnmgzW  which  transcends  contem- 
poraneous and  successive  nature.  How  can  faith  be  main- 
tained amid  an  absolute  negation  of  knowledge,  which 
implies  a  total  suspense  of  judgment  ? '  ^ 

We  must,  then,  assume  the  validity  of  our  knowledge 
as  far  as  it  goes,  incomplete  as  it  is  and  must  ever  remain  ; 
but  its  validity  is  an  assumption  or  postulate  which  we 
can  never  prove.  It  is  a  postulate  to  be  found  at  the 
heart  of  all  knowledge,  scientific  as  well  as  moral  and 
religious  ;  and  Eraser's  challenge  to  the  scientific  Agnostic 
is  to  abandon  this  postulate  without  at  the  same  time 
rendering  his  own  scientific  procedure  unreasonable  and 
contradictory,  A  truly  consistent  agnosticism,  he  argues, 
is  synonymous  with  universal  nescience  or  absolute  scepti- 
cism. '  Hume  sees  that  this  agnosticism,  when  fully 
thought  out,  involves  total  nescience,  not  merely  theologi- 
cal ignorance.  In  truth  the  negative  revolution  which 
was  proposed  by  Hume,  in  his  juvenile  "Treatise  of 
Human  Nature,"  is  more  bold  and  thorough  than  the 
scientific  agnosticism  of  Huxley,  which  claims  him  as  ist 
parent :  it  involves  the  complete  dissolution  of  common 
knowledge  and  science,  not  of  theology  alone.  .  .  .  All 
assertion  about  what  is  outside  present  feeling  must  be 
unproved  assertion.     Intellect  can  at  the  most  only  have 

^  Biographia  Philosophica,  p.  148.  *  Ibid.,  p.  156. 

'  Essays  in  Philosophy,  pp.  194,  195. 


31 6         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

strength  enough  to  extinguish  itself.'*  The  scientific 
interpretability  of  nature  is  the  presupposition  of  its  scien- 
tific interpretation  ;  science,  as  well  as  action,  assumes 
the  orderliness  or  uniformity  of  nature.  But  '  is  not  this 
interpretability  of  nature  another  name  for  its  innate 
divinity — its  final  supernaturalness  ? '  ^  '  Faith  in  the 
laws  of  nature  is  unconscious  faith  in  God  omni- 
present in  nature.  It  is  in  this  moral  reliance  on  the 
surroundings  amidst  which  we  live  and  move  and  have 
our  being  that  men  are  able  to  transcend  their  momen- 
tary perceptions,  and  to  bring  into  a  large  or  scientific 
experience  what  is  not  actually  present  to  their  senses.'^ 
Thus  *the  incoherent  agnosticism  that  retains  physical 
science  is  not  really  a  protest  against  faith  ;  it  is  only 
an  arrest  of  faith  at  the  point  at  which  faith  advances 
from  a  narrower  to  a  larger  interpretation  of  life  and  the 
universe.'  * 

But  it  is  not  only  in  its  beginnings,  but  also  in  its 
ultimate  issues,  that  our  knowledge  necessitates  faith  in 
that  which  transcends  knowledge.  If  he  does  not,  like 
Hamilton,  insist  upon  the  ultimate  self-contradictoriness  of 
human  knowledge,  Fraser  does  insist,  with  no  less  em- 
phasis, upon  its  ultimate  mysteriousness.  Whenever  we 
attempt  to  complete  it,  it  loses  itself  in  mystery.  This 
is  especially  true  of  space,  time  and  causality,  the  three 
categories  of  physical  science.  *The  understanding, 
measuring  by  sense  and  imagination,  tries  to  transcend 
itself,  and  in  doing  so  is  always  lost  at  last  in  the  Infinite 
Reality.  How  to  reconcile  finite  places  with  the  Immensity 
in  which  place  seems  lost,  or  finite  times  with  the  Eternity 
in  which  duration  seems  to  disappear, — the  placed  with 
the  placeless,  the  timed  or  dated  with  the  timeless, — is  the 
mystery  of  an  experience  which,  like  ours,  is  conditioned 
by  place  and  time,  in  a  way  that  must  always  leave  thought 
at  the  last  under  a  sense  of  intellectual  incompleteness 
and  dissatisfaction.'^  The  lesson  of  this  final  incom- 
pleteness of  human  knowledge  is  the  necessity  of  faith 

»  Philosophy  of  Theism^  2nd  ed.,  pp.  112,  1 13.       ^  jbid,^  p.  1 16, 
»  Ibid.^  p.  115.  *  Ibid.t  p.  120.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  96,  97. 


CAMPBELL  FRASER  317 

at  the  end  as  well  as  at  the  beginning,  the  equal  im- 
possibility of  universal  nescience,  or  scepticism,  and  of 
omniscience,  or  perfect  insight.  Man's  true  place  is  in 
that  *  isthmus  of  a  middle  state '  which  lies  neither  in 
rational  insight  nor  in  total  ignorance,  but  in  a  reasonable 
faith. 

This  faith  is  a  moral  faith,  or  faith  not  merely  in  the 
rationality,  but  in  the  goodness,  of  the  ultimate  Power. 
The  ultimate  presupposition  of  the  validity  of  human 
knowledge  is,  as  Descartes  insisted,  the  divine  veracity 
or,  in  Fraser's  words,  the  trustworthiness  of  our  experience, 
the  assumption  that  the  ultimate  Power  will  not  put  us 
to  intellectual  or  moral  confusion.  'If  God,  or  Perfect 
Goodness,  is  supreme,  external  nature  and  my  original 
faculties  cannot  delude  me.  For  this  would  be  to  suppose 
that  the  Universal  Nature  and  my  nature  are  in  contra- 
diction, so  that  I  might  be  obliged  to  believe  a  lie.  The 
presupposition  that  forbids  the  entrance  of  this  total  scepti- 
cism is  the  presupposition  that  God  or  Perfect  Goodness 
is  omnipresent  and  omnipotent.  The  trustworthiness  of 
my  original  nature  and  the  interpretability  of  universal 
nature,  presuppose  the  constant  action  of  morally  perfect 
Power  at  the  heart  of  the  Whole.'  ^  As  the  presupposi- 
tion of  all  thought  and  of  all  reasonable  action  alike,  the 
existence,  or  rather  the  activity,  of  God  or  Perfect  Good- 
ness cannot  be  proved  ;  it  is  itself  the  presupposition  of 
all  proof.  The  ultimateness  of  the  distinction  between 
moral  or  personal  beings  and  impersonal  things  is  the 
great  barrier  to  a  complete  knowledge  of  the  universe  ; 
we  cannot  reconcile  man's  freedom  with  the  necessity 
of  nature  or  with  the  omnipotence  of  God.  The  attempt 
to  demonstrate  the  existence  and  nature  of  the  Ultimate 
Reality  leads  inevitably  to  a  pantheistic  or  non-moral  in- 
terpretation of  it,  to  the  elimination  of  that  which  is  the 
guiding  feature  of  Reality  as  we  experience  it,  moral 
personality. 

But  moral  experience  itself  presents  a  great  obstacle  to 

^  Philosophy  of  Theism,  p.  176. 


31 8  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

the  belief  in  the  perfect  goodness  of  the  ultimate  Power. 

*  The  great  enigma  of  theistic  faith '  is  the  fact  of  moral 
evil.  The  alternative  w^hich  it  compels  us  to  face  is 
*a  universe,  of  non-moral  things,'  in  vi^hich  evil  cannot 
exist  because  good  is  equally  impossible — a  non-moral 
universe  on  the  one  hand,  or  a  universe  which  includes 

*  persons,  who,  as  persons,  must  have  an  absolute  power 
to  make  themselves  bad' — a  moral  universe  which,  as 
moral,  implies  the  possibility  of  immoral  actions,  on  the 
other  ;  a  universe  of  things  or  a  universe  in  which  things 
serve  the  purposes  and  are  the  instruments  of  the  moral 
education  of  persons ;  a  universe  which  is  neither  good 
nor  evil,  or  a  universe  which,  because  it  is  not  wholly 
good,  but  contains  within  it  the  possibility  of  both  good 
and  evil,  may  progressively  become  better.  '  Is  not  a 
world  that  includes  persons  better  than  a  wholly  non- 
moral  world,  from  which  persons  are  excluded — say  on 
account  of  the  risk  of  the  entrance  into  existence  of  what 
ought  not  to  exist,  through  the  personal  power  to  act  ill 
implied  in  morally  responsible  individual  agency?'  A 
person  who  is  not  free  to  do  what  he  ought  not  to  do 
is  not  a  person,  and  *  God  cannot  make  actual  what  in- 
volves express  contradiction — namely,  the  existence  of  a 
person  who  is  not  a  person  ;  for  individual  personality 
involves  responsible  freedom  to  act  ill.  If  this  seems  to 
limit  omnipotence,  or  make  God  finite,  the  alternative 
supposition — that  the  existence  of  beings  who  are  morally 
responsible  for  their  acts  is  impossible  for  God  in  a 
perfectly  constituted  universe,  is  surely  not  less  a  limita- 
tion of  omnipotence.  It  is  a  limitation,  too,  that  is  im- 
posed only  on  the  ground  of  a  residuum  of  incomplete  or 
mysterious  conception  implied  in  the  idea  of  individual  or 
finite  personality  :  whilst  the  obstacle  to  a  being  existing, 
who  is  at  once  a  responsible  person,  and  yet  unable  to  act 
freely,  lies  not  in  its  mysteriousness,  but  in  its  evident 
absurdity.'^ 

*  Philosophy  of  Theism,  p.  268. 


CHAPTER   III 

THE  IDEALISTIC  ANSWER  TO  HUME- 
SPIRITUAL  PHILOSOPHY  AND  ABSO- 
LUTE IDEALISM 

I.  Spiritual  Philosophy — Coleridge  and  Newman 

The  earliest,  and  in  some  ways  the  most  influential,  re- 
presentative of  German  Transcendental  Philosophy  in 
England  is  the  poet-philosopher,  Coleridge.  As  we  have 
seen,  Mill  regarded  him  as  dividing  with  Bentham  the 
allegiance  of  the  thoughtful  youth  of  the  time,  and  Leslie 
Stephen  agrees  that  *  he  was  undoubtedly  the  most  con- 
spicuous representative  of  the  tendencies  opposed  to  utili- 
tarianism.' *The  most  remarkable  thing,'  says  the  litter 
writer,  '  is  the  apparent  disproportion  between  Coleridge's 
definite  services  to  philosophy  and  the  effect  which  he 
certainly  produced  upon  some  of  his  ablest  contemporaries.' 

*  His  writings  are  a  heap  of  fragments,'  they  consist  of 

*  random  and  discursive  hints.'  *  His  most  coherent  ex- 
position [in  the  Biographia  Literaria']  is  simply  appropriated 
from  Schelling,  though  he  ascribes  the  identity  to  a  "  genial 
coincidence  of  thought."  '  ^  It  is  a  striking  testimony  to 
Coleridge's  real  speculative  power  that,  in  spite  of  these 
obvious  shortcomings  in  the  form  of  its  presentation,  his 
philosophical  teaching  should  have  made  such  a  deep  im- 
pression upon  the  readers  of  his  books,  as  well  as  upon 
those  who  came  under  the  spell  of  his  conversational 
powers.  The  unfortunate  and  ominous  literary  plagiarism 
to  which  Leslie  Stephen  gives  such  prominence  by  no 
means   cancels   the    fact  of  Coleridge's   originality  as   a 

^  English  Utilitarians,  ii.  373-4,  380. 
319 


320  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

thinker.  He  was  no  mere  purveyor  of  German  philo- 
sophy to  the  English  public.  Even  where  his  views 
approach  most  nearly  to  those  of  Kant  and  Schelling, 
and  are  most  clearly  influenced  by  these  philosophers, 
with  the  one  exception  referred  to,  he  maintains  his  in- 
dependence, and  is  apt  to  give  the  theory  a  turn  of  his 
own  which  its  original  expositor  would  have  entirely 
repudiated. 

Mill  describes  Coleridge  as  *  the  great  awakener  in  this 
country  of  the  spirit  of  philosophy,  within  the  bounds  of 
traditional  opinions.  He  .has  been,  almost  as  truly  as 
Bentham,  "  the  great  questioner  of  things  established  "  ; 
for  a  questioner  need  not  necessarily  be  an  enemy.  By 
Bentham,  beyond  all  others,  men  have  been  led  to  ask 
themselves,  in  regard  to  any  ancient  or  received  opinion. 
Is  it  true  ?  and  by  Coleridge,  What  is  the  meaning  of  it  ?'  ^ 
Yet  in  Mill's  eyes  Coleridge  is  pre-eminently  the  represen- 
tative of  a  wise  conservatism  in  the  sphere  of  politics  and 
religion.  After  a  graphic  description  of  the  state  of  things 
which  the  eighteenth  century  had  left  as  an  inheritance  to 
the  nineteenth,  he  says  :  '  This  was  not  a  state  of  things 
which  could  recommend  itself  to  any  earnest  mind.  It 
was  sure  in  no  great  length  of  time  to  call  forth  two  sorts 
of  men — the  one  demanding  the  extinction  of  the  institu- 
tions and  creeds  which  had  hitherto  existed  ;  the  other, 
that  they  be  made  a  reality  :  the  one  pressing  the  new 
doctrines  to  their  utmost  consequences ;  the  other  re- 
asserting the  best  meaning  and  purposes  of  the  old.  The 
first  type  attained  its  greatest  height  in  Bentham  ;  the  last 
in  Coleridge '  ^  This  is  a  characterisation  to  which 
Coleridge  himself  might  well  have  assented.  The  revolt 
which  he  represents  against  the  negative  rationalism  of  the 
eighteenth  century  might  be  described  in  his  own  language 
as  the  revolt  of  the  Reason  against  the  Understanding. 
The  eighteenth  century  had  been,  on  the  whole,  the  reign 
of  the  discursive  understanding  ;  its  criterion  of  truth  had 
been   *  conceivability,'   it  had    been    the  enemy  of  *  en- 

*  Dissertations,  i.  393.  *  Ibid.,  i.  436. 


COLERIDGE  321 

thusiasm,'  of  imagination,  of  the  higher  reason  and  its 
intuitions.  Coleridge  would  substitute  a  '  dynamic '  for 
its  '  mechanical '  system,  a  spiritual  for  its  materialistic 
and  naturalistic  view  of  the  world  and  human  life.  For 
its  futile  '  Natural  Theology '  and  *  Natural  Religion  '  he 
would  substitute  a  philosophy  which,  by  its  spiritual  in- 
sight, should  end  the  old  conflict  between  philosophy 
and  religion. 

Mill's  suggestion  that  Coleridge  kept  his  questionings 
'  within  the  bounds  of  traditional  opinions '  is  apt  to 
suggest  a  serious  misconception  as  to  the  limitations  of 
his  philosophical  experience.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
comparatively  conservative  views  which  he  finally  accepted 
were  reached  after  a  wide  and  varied  journey  in  the  world 
of  speculative  thought,  just  as  his  political  and  theological 
conservatism  was  a  reaction  from  the  extremely  radical 
views  on  these  questions  entertained  by  him  in  his  youth. 
Like  Wordsworth  and  Southey,  Coleridge  came  under 
the  spell  of  the  ideas  that  animated  the  French  Revolu- 
tion. He  had  resolved  to  join  Southey  in  realising  a 
*  pantisocracy '  on  the  banks  of  the  Susquehana,  and  later  he 
had  attempted  the  role  of  Unitarian  preacher.  His  earliest 
philosophical  enthusiasm,  when  a  schoolboy  at  Christ's 
Hospital,  was  the  mysticism  of  Plotinus,  as  we  learn  from 
Lamb's  famous  picture  of  '  the  inspired  charity-boy ' 
expounding  that  author  to  his  school-fellows.  The  next, 
and  probably  more  serious,  philosophical  influence  under 
which  he  came  was  that  of  Hartley.  He  *  named  his 
first  son  after  Hartley,  and  slept  with  the  Observations  on 
Man  under  his  pillow,'  says  one  who  grew  up  under  the 
same  influence.^     Hartley  was,  to  his  youthful  vision, 

'  He  of  mortal  kind 
Wisest,  he  first  who  marked  the  ideal  tribes 
Up  the  fine  fibres  through  the  sentient  brain.'  * 

It  was  only  after  much  further  speculative  experience, 
and  finally  passing  through  a  stage  of  Humian  scepticism, 

^  Martineau,  Essays,  iv.  490.  *  Religious  Musings. 

X 


322         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

that  he  began  to  reconstruct  a  philosophy  of  his  own  on 
more  positive  and  conservative  lines.  Mr.  Shavv^cross,  in 
his  invaluable  introduction  to  the  Oxford  edition  of  the 
Biographia  Literaria^  makes  it  clear  that  he  had  reached  his 
characteristic  positions  before  he  made  the  acquaintance 
of  Kant,  and  later  of  Schelling,  that  in  the  main  he  used 
what  knowledge  he  acquired  of  these  philosophers  in  the 
interests  of  the  views  which  he  had  thus  independently 
reached,  and  that  he  never  attempted  the  accurate  or 
complete  reproduction  of  philosophical  systems  with  which 
he  only  partially  sympathised. 

Coleridge's  two  leading  doctrines,  which  he  never 
developed  into  a  philosophical  system,  though  he  often 
promised  to  do  so,  were  the  distinction  between  Imagination 
and  Fancy,  and  that  between  Reason  and  Understanding. 
The  former,  which  was  partly  worked  out  in  conversa- 
tions with  Wordsworth  and  in  reference  to  that  poet's 
views  as  formulated  in  his  well-known  Preface  to  the 
Poems f  is  found  in  the  Biographia  Literaria  (1817)  ;  the 
latter  in  the  Aids  to  Reflection  (1825). 

The  question  of  the  nature  of  Imagination,  and  how  it 
differs  from  Fancy,  arose  primarily,  for  Coleridge  as  for 
Wordsworth,  with  reference  to  the  nature  of  poetry,  and 
in  the  interests  of  a  sound  poetical  criticism  ;  but  for 
Coleridge  it  ultimately  expanded  into  the  larger  question 
of  the  function  and  validity  of  the  Imagination  in  the 
search  for  truth.  It  was  in  listening  to  a  poem  of  Words- 
worth's that  the  question  first  arose  in  his  mind.  *In 
poems,  equally  as  in  philosophic  disquisitions,  genius  pro- 
duces the  strongest  impressions  of  novelty,  while  it  rescues 
the  most  admitted  truths  from  the  impotence  caused  by 
the  very  circumstance  of  their  universal  admission.  .  .  . 
This  excellence,  which  in  all  Mr.  Wordsworth's  writings 
is  more  or  less  predominant,  and  which  constitutes  the 
character  of  his  mind,  I  no  sooner  felt,  than  I  sought  to 
understand.  Repeated  meditations  led  me  first  to  suspect 
(and  a  more  intimate  analysis  of  the  human  faculties,  their 
appropriate  marks,  functions,  and  effects,  matured  my  con- 
jecture into  full  conviction),  that  fancy  and  imagination 


COLERIDGE  323 

were  two  distinct  and  widely  different  faculties,  instead  of 
being,  according  to  the  general  belief,  either  two  names 
with  one  meaning,  or,  at  furthest,  the  lower  and  higher 
degree  of  one  and  the  same  power.'  ^  The  essential 
difference  is  that  while  Fancy  is  determined  by  mere 
accidental  and  subjective  association  of  ideas.  Imagination 
works  under  the  dominion  of  objective  law  and  the  truth 
of  things ;  while  the  former  is  merely  reproductive,  the 
latter  is  truly  creative.  Imagination  is  the  '  shaping  and 
modifying  power,'  Fancy  *  the  aggregative  and  associative 
power.'  2  Coleridge  therefore  calls  the  former  the  *  esem- 
plastic  power,'  and  distinguishes  two  forms  or  degrees  of 
it,  the  primary  and  the  secondary.  By  the  primary  imagina- 
tion he  seems  to  mean  the  power  by  which  the  mind  of 
man  weaves  the  web  of  its  experience  out  of  the  data 
of  sensation  ;  by  the  secondary,  that  higher  degree  of  the 
same  power,  by  which  the  poet  and  the  philosopher  seize 
the  essential  meaning  of  this  common  experience.  It  is 
this  *  shaping  spirit  of  Imagination  '  that  is  the  real  source 
of  the  beauty  of  Nature. 

'  O  Lady  !  we  receive  but  what  we  give, 
And  in  our  life  alone  doth  Nature  live  ! 
Ours  is  her  wedding-garment,  ours  her  shroud  ! ' 

The  distinction  between  Imagination  and  Fancy,  to 
which  so  much  importance  is  attached  in  the  Biographia 
Literaria^  gives  place,  in  the  Aids  to  ReflectioJiy  to  the 
distinction  between  Reason  and  Understanding.  This 
distinction,  in  the  form  in  which  it  is  stated,  is  borrowed 
from  Kant,  with  whose  philosophy  Coleridge  made 
acquaintance  in  1801.  *To  Kant,' says  Mr.  Shawcross, 
*  his  obligations  (as  he  was  never  tired  of  asserting)  were 
far  greater  than  to  any  other  of  Kant's  countrymen  :  to 
him  alone  could  he  be  said  to  assume  in  any  degree  the 
attitude  of  pupil  to  master.  Yet  even  to  Kant  his  debt 
seems  on  the  whole  to  have  been  more  formal  than 
material — to  have    resided  rather  in    the  scientific  state- 

1  Biog.  Phil.,  i.  60.  '  Ibid.,  i.  193. 


324         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

ment  of  convictions  previously  attained  than  in  the 
acquisition  of  nevk^  truths.  ...  In  nothing  does  this 
appear  more  clearly  than  in  the  distinction  of  Reason  and 
Understanding.  This  distinction,  as  elaborated  by  Kant, 
must  have  been  hailed  by  Coleridge  w^ith  especial  joy  ; 
for  it  gave  a  rational  basis  to  a  presentiment  of  much 
earlier  date.'^  He  accepts  Leighton's  definition  of  the 
Understanding  as  'the  faculty  judging  according  to 
sense.  *  '  Hence  we  add  the  epithet  humariy  w^ithout 
tautology :  and  speak  of  the  human  understanding,  in 
disjunction  from  that  of  beings  higher  or  low^er  than  man. 
But  there  is,  in  this  sense,  no  human  reason.'  His  own 
definition  of  Understanding  is  '  The  faculty  by  which  we 
reflect  and  generalise.'  It  follows  that  '  Understanding  in 
its  highest  form  of  experience  remains  commensurate  with 
the  experimental  notices  of  the  senses  from  which  it  is 
generalised.  Reason,  on  the  other  hand,  either  prede- 
termines experience,  or  avails  itself  of  a  past  experience 
to  supersede  its  necessity  in  all  future  time  ;  and  affirms 
truths  which  no  sense  could  perceive,  nor  experiment 
verify,  nor  experience  confirm.  Yea,  this  is  the  test  and 
character  of  a  truth  so  affirmed,  that  in  its  own  proper 
form  it  is  inconceivable.  For  to  conceive  is  a  function  of  the 
Understanding,  which  can  be  exercised  only  on  subjects 
subordinate  thereto.  And  yet  to  the  forms  of  the  Under- 
standing all  truth  must  be  reduced,  that  is  to  be  fixed  as 
an  object  of  reflection  and  to  be  rendered  expressible.''^ 
The  appropriate  sphere  of  the  Understanding  is  the 
natural,  not  the  spiritual  world.  It  is  limited  to  the 
objects  of  sense  and  of  possible  experience.  'Wherever 
the  forms  of  reasoning  appropriate  only  to  the  natural 
world  are  applied  to  spiritual  realities,  it  may  be  truly 
said,  that  the  more  strictly  logical  the  reasoning  is  in  all 
its  partSy  the  more  irrational  is  it  as  a  whole.''  ^ 

Though  Coleridge  does  not  distinguish  clearly  be- 
tween the  speculative  and  the  practical  reason,  it  is 
the   latter   rather   than  the    former   that    he   regards  as 

1  Biog.  Phil.,  Introd.,  p.  xli.        ^  Aids  to  Re/lection,  under  Aph.  viiL 
^  Ibid.,  Introd.  to  Apb.  x. 


COLERIDGE  325 

the  organ  of  spiritual  vision.  *  If  not  the  abstract 
or  speculative  reason — and  yet  a  reason  there  must  be 
in  order  to  a  rational  belief — then  it  must  be  the 
practical  reason  of  man,  comprehending  the  Will,  the 
Conscience,  the  Moral  Being  with  its  inseparable 
interests  and  Affections — that  Reason,  namely,  which 
is  the  Organ  of  Wisdom^  and  (as  far  as  man  is  concerned) 
the  source  of  living  and  actual  Truths.'^  To  the  prac- 
tical reason  he  attributes  knowledge  of  the  ultimate 
spiritual  realities,  while  Kant  limited  knowledge  to  phe- 
nomena, and  denied  to  the  practical  reason  the  privilege 
of  speculation.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  Coleridge 
comes  nearer  to  the  doctrine  of  Jacobi  than  to  that  of 
Kant,  as  Hort  remarks  in  his  excellent  essay.^  '  I  should 
have  no  objection,'  says  Coleridge,  '  to  define  reason  with 
Jacobi,  and  with  his  friend  Hemsterhuis,  as  an  organ  bear- 
ing the  same  relation  to  spiritual  objects,  the  universal,  the 
eternal,  and  the  necessary,  as  the  eye  bears  to  material 
and  contingent  phenomena.  But  then  it  must  be  added, 
that  it  is  an  organ  identical  with  its  appropriate  objects. 
Thus  God,  the  soul,  eternal  truth,  etc.,  are  the  objects 
of  reason  ;  but  they  are  themselves  reason.'  ^  Practical 
reason  thus  becomes  synonymous  with  Faith,  which  he 
defines  as  'fidelity  to  our  own  being — so  far  as  such 
being  is  not  and  cannot  become  an  object  of  the  senses  ; 
and  hence,  by  clear  inference  or  implication,  to  being 
generally,  as  far  as  the  same  is  not  the  object  of  the 
senses  ;  and  again  to  whatever  is  affirmed  or  understood 
as  the  condition,  or  concomitant,  or  consequence  of  the 
same.'  *  In  the  Will  or  originative  agency  of  man  he 
finds  the  clue  to  the  distinction  of  Spirit  from  Nature. 
These  terms  are  properly  antithetic,  'so  that  the  most 
general  and  negative  definition  of  Nature  is.  Whatever  is 
not  Spirit ;  and  vice  versd  of  Spirit.  That  which  is  not 
comprehended  in  Nature :  or  in  the  language  of  our 
elder  divines,  that  which  transcends  Nature.     But  nature 

^  Aids  to  Reflection,  Aph.  ii.  '  Cambridge  Essays,  1856. 

'  The  Friend,  i.  208,  ed.  1844,  quoted  by  Hort,  p.  322. 
*  Essay  on  Faith. 


326         ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

is  the  term  in  which  we  comprehend  all  things  that 
are  representable  in  the  forms  of  time  and  space,  and 
subjected  to  the  relations  of  cause  and  effect :  and  the 
cause  of  the  existence  of  which,  therefore,  is  to  be  sought 
for  perpetually  in  something  antecedent.  ...  It  follows, 
therefore,  that  whatever  originates  its  own  acts,  or  in  any 
sense  contains  in  itself  the  cause  of  its  own  state,  must  be 
spiritual^  and  consequently  supernatural :  yet  not  on  that 
account  necessarily  miraculous.  And  such  must  the 
responsible  will  in  us  be,  if  it  be  at  all.'' 

The  distinction  between  Reason  and  Understanding 
gives  the  clue  to  the  difference  between  true  Morality 
and  mere  Prudence.  '  Morality  arising  out  of  the  Reason 
and  Conscience  of  Men,  and  Prudence,  which  in  like 
manner  flows  out  of  the  Understanding  and  the  natural 
Wants  and  Desires  of  the  Individual,  are  two  distinct 
things.'  ^  A  writer  who,  like  Paley,  reduces  morality  to 
prudence,  is  not  entitled  to  be  called  a  moralist.  *  Schemes 
of  conduct,  grounded  on  calculations  of  self-interest ;  or 
on  the  average  consequences  of  actions,  supposing  them 
general }  form  a  branch  of  Political  Economy,  to  which 
let  all  due  honour  be  given.  Their  utility  is  not  here 
questioned.  But  however  estimable  within  their  own 
sphere,  such  schemes,  or  any  one  of  them  in  particular, 
may  be,  they  do  not  belong  to  Moral  Science,  to  which, 
both  in  kind  and  purpose,  they  are  in  all  cases  foreign^ 
and,  when  substituted  for  it,  hostile.'  ^  An  action  is  good, 
not  in  respect  of  its  external  consequences,  but  as  an 
expression  of  the  unity  of  the  human  with  the  divine 
will.  *  Whatever  seeks  to  separate  itself  from  the  Divine 
Principle,  and  proceeds  from  a  false  centre  in  the  agent's 
particular  will,  is  evil — a  work  of  darkness  and  contradic- 
tion. It  is  sin,  and  essential  falsehood.'  *  Morality  con- 
sists in  the  identity  of  the  will  with  the  practical  reason. 
*  Conscience  is  a  witness  respecting  the  identity  of  the  will 
and  the  reason  effected  by  the  self-subordination  of  the 

1  Aids  to  Reflection,  Introd.  to  Aph.  x. 

■  Ibid. ,  under  Aph.  vii. 

•  Ibid.,  Aph.  xii.  *  Loc.  cit. 


JOHN   HENRY   NEWMAN         327 

will,  or  self,  to  the  reason,  sis  equal  to,  or  representing, 
the  will  of  God.' 1 

The  reader  cannot  fail  to  be  disappointed  with  the  style 
of  the  Aids  to  Reflection  ;  it  is  certainly  not  to  its  literary 
quality  that  its  influence  is  to  be  traced.  As  Traill 
says,  it  possesses  Mess  charm  of  thought,  less  beauty  of 
style,  less  even  of  Coleridge's  seldom-failing  force  of 
effective  statement'  than  almost  any  of  his  writings.^ 
The  Biographia  Literaria  is  written  more  in  the  author's 
own  manner,  'the  manner  of  the  great  pulpit  orators  of 
the  seventeenth  century,'  whose  spirit  and  style  he  had 
caught  from  sympathetic  study  of  their  works.  But  the 
real  interest  and  value  of  both  books  lies  in  their  sub- 
stance and  spirit,  in  the  thought  and  criticism  which 
they  contain,  in  the  moral  earnestness  which  inspires 
them,  and  communicates  itself  to  the  reader. 

In  an  article  written  in  1839,  quoted  in  the  Apologia^ 
John  Henry  Newman  connects  Coleridge  with  Scott, 
Southey,  and  Wordsworth,  as  a  representative  of  '  the  need 
which  was  felt  both  by  the  heart  and  the  intellect  of  the 
nation  for  a  deeper  philosophy.'  '  While  history  in  prose 
and  verse  was  thus  made  the  instrument  of  Church  feelings 
and  opinions,  a  philosophical  basis  for  the  same  was  laid 
in  England  by  a  very  original  thinker,  who,  while  he 
indulged  a  liberty  of  speculation,  which  no  Christian 
can  tolerate,  and  advocated  conclusions  which  were 
often  heathen  rather  than  Christian,  yet  after  all  in- 
stalled a  higher  philosophy  into  inquiring  minds,  than 
they  had  hitherto  been  accustomed  to  accept.  In  this 
way  he  made  trial  of  his  age,  and  succeeded  in  interest- 
ing its  genius  in  the  cause  of  Catholic  truth.'  ^  Newman 
himself,  in  his  Grammar  of  Assent  (1870),  attempts  to 
determine  the  true  method  of  thought  on  the  ultimate 
questions.  The  work  is  of  great  philosophical,  as  well  as 
religious  significance,  and  is  a  remarkable  example  of  that 

^  Essay  on  Faith. 

2  Coleridge,  in  '  English  Men  of  Letters,'  p.  179. 

'  Apologia,  p.  97. 


328         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

style,  so  characteristic  of  its  author  yet  so  impossible  to 
describe,  which  combines  perfect  lucidity  and  the  total 
absence  of  straining  after  effect  with  a  beauty  and  dignity 
all  its  own,  the  utmost  simplicity  with  an  undefinable 
distinction. 

Newman,  like  Coleridge,  is  the  enemy  of  rationalism, 
or  the  attempt,  which  he  regards  as  foredoomed  to 
failure,  to  reduce  faith  to  terms  of  logic.  The  ultimately 
decisive  element  in  Assent  is,  he  holds,  the  personal 
element.  Certitude  is  a  subjective  feeling,  varying  with 
the  individual,  rather  than  a  unanimity  determined  by 
reference  to  a  common  standard.  *We  need  the  inter- 
position of  a  Power,  greater  than  human  teaching  and 
human  argument,  to  make  our  beliefs  true  and  our 
minds  one.'  ^  We  apprehend  the  ultimate  Reality  in  the 
same  way  as  we  apprehend  ordinary  matters  of  fact ;  in 
both  cases  alike  Assent  is  implicitly  rational,  though  it 
transcends  the  limits  of  explicit  proof.  The  faith  which 
is  present  in  all  our  so-called  knowledge  is,  we  must 
believe,  entirely  rational ;  but  it  is  vain  to  attempt  to 
rationalise  it.  The  certainties  of  belief  are  themselves 
the  final  resultant  of  a  mass  of  probabilities  ;  the  *  proofs ' 
which  determine  our  Assent  are  not  logical  proofs,  and 
the  attempt  to  establish  the  validity  of  these  beliefs  on 
logical  grounds  can  only  result  in  incurable  scepticism. 

The  entire  argument  rests  upon  the  distinction  between 
the  *  notional '  and  the  *  real,'  the  abstract  and  the  concrete, 
alike  in  apprehension  and  in  assent.  The  notional  has 
to  do  with  the  abstractions  of  thought,  the  real  with 
the  actual  things,  the  matters  of  fact  of  our  experience. 
Real  assent,  or  belief,  since  it  depends  upon  experience, 
is  always  personal,  '  the  accident  of  this  or  that  man.' 
It  is  always  complete ;  we  cannot  rightly  speak  of 
*  degrees  of  assent,'  varying  from  probability  to  certainty 
according  to  the  evidence  that  determines  it.  Assent 
is  never  merely  '  the  echo  of  an  inference,'  it  is  always 
*a    substantive    act.'^       We    must    further    distinguish 

*  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  375.  '  Ibid.,  p.  166. 


JOHN   HENRY   NEWMAN  329 

*  certitude '  from  assent.  Certitude  is  a  *  deliberate  assent 
given  expressly  after  reasoning ' ;  ^  Mt  follows  upon 
examination  and  proof,  as  the  bell  sounds  the  hour,  when 
the  hands  reach  it.'  ^  But  the  reasoning  or  inference 
upon  which  it  rests  is  informal,  not  formal,  implicit,  not 
explicit.  Formal  inference  is  notional  and  abstract ;  hence 
the  logic  which  formulates  it  tends  always  to  the 
symbolic  form,  it  *  starves  each  term  down  till  it  has 
become  the  ghost  of  itself,  and  everywhere  one  and 
the  same  ghost,  "  omnibus  umbra  locis." '  ^  Logic 
thus  separates  us  from  reality,  and  acquaints  us  with 
a  world  of  abstractions.  'This  universal  living  scene 
of  things  is  after  all  as  little  a  logical  world  as  it  is  a 
poetical ;  and,  as  it  cannot  without  violence  be  exalted 
into  poetical  perfection,  neither  can  it  be  attenuated 
into  a  logical  formula.'^  Formal  inference  leads,  there- 
fore, only  to  probability  ;  it  can  never  yield  certainty. 
Its  premisses  are  assumed,  not  proved.     It  depends  upon 

*  first  principles,'  which  *  are  called  self-evident  by  their 
respective  advocates  because  they  are  evident  in  no 
other  way.'  *It  only  leads  us  back  to  first  princi- 
ples, about  which  there  is  interminable  controvcisy.'  ^ 
And  its  conclusions  are  always  abstract,  never  concrete. 
It  confuses  the  similar  with  the  identical,  the  general 
"with  the  universal.  The  real  is  always  individual, 
similar  to  other  individuals,  but  never  identical  with 
them  ;  our  statements  about  it  may  have  general,  they 
can  never  have  universal  validity.  Compared  with  the 
cumbrous  and  ineffective  methods  of  formal  logic,  '  how 
short  and  easy  a  way  to  a  true  conclusion  is  the  logic 
of  good  sense ;  how  little  syllogisms  have  to  do  with 
the  formation  of  opinion  ;  how  little  depends  upon  the 
inferential  proofs,  and  how  much  upon  those  pre-existing 
beliefs  and  views,  in  which  men  either  already  agree 
with  each  other  or  hopelessly  differ,  before  they  begin 
to  dispute,  and  which  are  hidden  deep  in  our  nature, 
or,  it  may  be,  in  our  personal  peculiarities.''' 

1  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  229.         *  Ibid.,  p.  236.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  267, 

*  Ibid.^  p.  268.  *  Ibid.,  p.  270.  *  Ibid.,  p.  277. 


330         ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

The  real  method  by  which  we  attain  to  concrete 
certainties,  by  which  conditional  inference  leads  to  un- 
conditional assent,  is  rather  the  intuitive  judgment  or 
perception  which  seizes  the  conclusion  as  a  result  of 
a  mass  of  converging  probabilities,  the  tact  of  the  trained 
intellect  which  cannot  analyse  the  reasons  that  have 
appealed  to  it,  or  formulate  the  hints  and  suggestions 
that  have  led  to  its  decision.  'It  is  the  cumulation  of 
probabilities,  independent  of  each  other,  arising  out  of 
the  nature  and  circumstances  of  the  particular  case  which 
is  under  review  ;  probabilities  too  fine  to  avail  separately, 
too  subtle  and  circuitous  to  be  convertible  into  syllogisms, 
too  numerous  and  various  for  such  conversion,  even 
were  they  convertible.'^  In  such  a  real  inference  we 
feel  the  momentum  of  the  mass  of  probabilities,  con- 
firming and  correcting  one  another,  and  the  conclusion 
is  'an  unwritten  summing-up';  the  mind  is  'swayed 
and  determined  by  a  body  of  proof,  which  it  recog- 
nises only  as  a  body,  and  not  in  its  constituent  parts.' ^ 
Or,  more  accurately  stated,  the  decisive  factor  in  the 
entire  procedure  is  '  the  living  mind '  of  the  individual. 
The  impression  which  the  body  of  proof  makes  upon 
the  individual  mind  varies  with  the  individual ;  for  it 
is  not  strictly  an  impression,  but  the  result  of  the  re- 
action of  the  mind  itself.  '  It  follows  that  what  to  one 
intellect  is  a  proof  is  not  so  to  another,  and  that  the 
certainty  of  a  proposition  does  properly  consist  in  the 
certitude  of  the  mind  that  contemplates  it.'  ^ 

The  ultimate  principle,  then,  in  belief,  is  a  kind  of 
instinct  or  feeling  for  truth,  what  Newman  calls  '  the 
Illative  Sense,'  or  '  right  judgment  in  ratiocination  ' ;  and 
'  such  a  living  organon  is  a  personal  gift,  and  not  a  mere 
method  or  calculus.'  *  The  ultimate  premisses  or  first 
principles  of  our  reasoning  are  always  personal.  '  Even 
when  we  agree  together,  it  is  not  perhaps  that  we  learn 
one  from  another,  or  fall  under  any  law  of  agreement, 
but  that  our  separate  idiosyncrasies  happen  to  concur.'* 

»  Grammar  of  Assent,  p.  288.       *  Ibid.,  p.  292.        »  Ibid.,  p.  293. 
*  Ibid.,  p.  316.  «  Ibid.,  p.  373- 


JOHN   HENRY   NEWMAN         331 

What  guarantee  have  we,  then,  for  the  objectivity 
of  truth,  if  there  is  no  common  measure  to  which  we 
can  appeal,  if  the  only  standard  is  the  subjective  feeling  of 
the  individual  ?  The  only  answer  is  that  we  must  trust 
our  faculties ;  the  ultimate  sanction  of  truth  is  *  the 
trustworthiness  of  the  Illative  Sense.'  ^  '  There  is  no 
ultimate  test  of  truth  besides  the  testimony  borne  to 
truth    by    the    mind    itself.'^     It    is    'unmeaning'    to 

*  criticise  or  find  fault  with  our  own  nature,  which  is 
nothing  else  than  we  ourselves,  instead  of  using  it 
according  to  the  use  of  which  it  ordinarily  admits.'  Our 
criticism,  our  very  scepticism,  is  an  exercise  of  that 
nature,  and  implies  that  it  is  accepted  as  trustworthy. 
We  need  not  hope,  by  *  antecedent  reasoning,'  to  prove 
this  trustworthiness  or  to  escape  the  personal  equation 
in  our  apprehension  of  truth.  '  What  is  left  to  us  but 
to  take  things  as  they  are,  and  to  resign  ourselves  to 
what  we  find  ? '  ^  What  is  left  to  us  but  to  accept  our 
nature,  in  its  intellectual  as  well  as  its  moral  faculties,  as 
the  expression  of  the  will  of  God  ?  Our  trust  in  our 
own  nature  is  really  trust  in  God,  our  Maker. 

The    difficulty  itself,  however,  like   Hume's   sceptical 
doubt  which  also  finds  its  practical  solution  in  trust  in 

*  human  nature,'  arises  from  the  failure  to  discriminate, 
within  that  nature,  the  common  or  universal  from  the 
merely  individual  and  idiosyncratic  element.  While  it 
is  obviously  unmeaning  to  attempt  to  transcend  human 
nature  and  to  find  outside  it  a  standard  of  truth  to  which 
it  must  conform,  and  while  the  language  of  even  such 
a  transcendentalist  as  Kant  may  well  suggest  such  an 
impossible  procedure,  it  remains  to  ask  whether,  within 
human  nature,  the  rational  and  universal  cannot  be 
discriminated  from  the  subjective  and  individual.  New- 
man's own  central  view  of  the  implicit  rationality  of 
true  belief  suggests  the  possibility  of  its  indefinite 
rationalisation.  It  does  not  follow  that,  because  the 
individual    does   not    himself  make    the   analysis   of  the 

1  Grammar  of  Assent ,  p.  359.  •  Ibid.,  p.  350.  *  Loc.  cit. 


332  ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

rational  grounds  of  his  belief,  his  belief  is  incapable  of 
such  analysis  and  justification.  It  was  the  ambition  of 
the  Absolute  Idealists  to  demonstrate  the  rationality  and 
objectivity  of  that  Assent  the  grounds  of  which  remained 
for  Newman  inscrutable  to  reason. 


2.  Absolute  Idealism  :  Earlier  Version — Ferrier  and  Grote 

The  earliest,  and  in  some  ways  the  most  impressive, 
statement  of  absolute  idealism  in  English  philosophy  is 
that  of  J.  F.  Ferrier,  professor  of  moral  philosophy  at 
St.  Andrews  from  1845  to  1864.  No  less  interested  than 
Coleridge  and  Newman  in  the  affirmation  of  a  spiritual 
view  of  the  universe,  he  holds  that  it  is  possible  to 
demonstrate  the  truth  of  such  a  view.  In  any  case  he 
is  convinced  that  it  is  the  function  of  Philosophy  to 
demonstrate  truth  ;  he  defines  it  as  *  a  body  of  reasoned 
truth,*  *the  attainment  of  truth  by  the  way  of  reason."" 
Its  method  is  the  '  speculative  method,  which  means 
nothing  more  than  that  we  should  expend  upon  the  in- 
vestigation the  uttermost  toil  and  application  of  thought ; 
and  that  we  should  estimate  the  truths  which  we  arrive 
at,  not  by  the  scale  of  their  importance,  but  by  the 
scale  of  their  difficulty  of  attainment,  of  their  cost  of 
production.  Labour^  we  repeat  it,  is  the  standard  which 
measures  the  value  of  truth,  as  well  as  the  value  of 
wealth,'  ^  He  has  no  patience,  therefore,  with  the  pre- 
tensions of  the  '  Philosophy  of  Common  Sense.'  Of 
Hamilton,  whom  he  knew  intimately,  he  says,  *I  have 
learned  more  from  him  than  from  all  other  philosophers 
put  together  ;  more,  both  as  regards  what  I  assented  to 
and  what  I  dissented  from ' ;  but  he  regarded  the  time 
spent  by  Hamilton  in  editing  Reid's  works  as  little  better 
than  wasted.  So  far  from  Common  Sense  being  the 
criterion  of  philosophical  truth,  he  holds  that  *the  con- 
ciliation of  ordinary  thinking,  or  "  common  sense,"  as  it  is 
sometimes  rather  abusively  called,  and  philosophy,  can  be 

'  Philosophical  Remains,  VL.  ^Z"^, 


FERRIER  333 

very  well  effected  by  the  former  giving  in  her  submission 
to  the  decisions  of  the  compulsory  reason.'  ^  He  has  a 
further  ground  of  quarrel  with  the  Scottish  Philosophy, 
namely,  that  it  adopts  the  psychological  method  and  believes 
in  a  *  science  of  the  human  mind.'  *  Perhaps  no  better  or 
more  comprehensive  description  of  the  object  of  meta- 
physical or  speculative  philosophy  could  be  given  than 
this  :  that  it  is  a  science  which  exists,  and  has  at  all  times 
existed,  chiefly  for  the  purpose  of  exposing  the  vanity  and 
confounding  the  pretensions  of  what  is  called  the  "science 
of  the  human  mind." '  2  '  The  best  way  of  attaining 
to  correct  opinions  on  most  metaphysical  subjects  is  by 
finding  out  what  has  been  said  on  any  given  point  by  the 
psychologists,  and  then  by  saying  the  very  opposite.'  ^ 

Already  in  his  own  lifetime  Ferrier  was  regarded,  as  he 
has  been  constantly  represented  since,  as  an  adherent  of 
the  Hegelian  philosophy.  Such  an  affiliation  he  strongly 
denied,  rightly  claiming  originality  for  the  way  in  which 
he  reached  a  result  which,  it  is  true,  coincides  in  the 
main  with  that  of  the  Hegelian  dialectic.  In  an  appendix 
to  the  InstituteSy  he  says  :  '  Some  of  my  critics  assert  that 
my  philosophy  is  nothing  but  an  echo  of  Hegel's ;  others 
have  doubted  whether  I  know  anything  at  all  about  that 
philosopher.  The  exact  truth  of  the  matter  is  this  :  I 
have  read  most  of  Hegel's  works  again  and  again,  but 
I  cannot  say  that  I  am  acquainted  with  his  philosophy. 
I  am  able  to  understand  only  a  few  short  passages  here 
and  there  in  his  writings ;  and  these  I  greatly  admire  for 
the  depth  of  their  insight,  the  breadth  of  their  wisdom, 
and  the  loftiness  of  their  tone.  More  than  this  I  cannot 
say.  If  others  understand  him  better,  and  to  a  larger 
extent,  they  have  the  advantage  of  me,  and  I  confess  that 
I  envy  them  the  privilege.  But,  for  myself,  I  must 
declare  that  I  have  not  found  one  word  or  one  thought 
in  Hegel  which  was  available  for  my  system,  even  if  I  had 
been  disposed  to  use  it.  If  Hegel  follows  (as  I  do)  the 
demonstrative  method,  I  own  I  cannot  see  it,  and  would 

*  Institutes  of  Metaphy sic,  Introd. ,  sect.  49. 

*  Remains,  ii.  445.  '  Institutes,  p.  315. 


334         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

feel  much  obliged  to  any  one  who  would  point  this  out, 
and  make  it  clear.  In  other  respects,  my  method  is 
diametrically  opposed  to  his ;  he  begins  with  the  con- 
sideration of  Being  ;  my  whole  design  compels  me  to  begin 
with  the  consideration  of  Knowing.'  ^  In  the  Institutes  itself 
he  speaks  of  Hegel  as  *  impenetrable,  almost  throughout, 
as  a  mountain  of  adamant,'  ^  and  exclaims,  *  Hegel, — but 
who  has  ever  yet  uttered  one  intelligible  word  about 
Hegel  ?  Not  any  of  his  countrymen, — not  any  foreigner, 
— seldom  even  himself.'  ^  Internal  evidence  confirms 
what  these  words  suggest,  that  Ferricr  worked  his  way 
independently  to  his  conclusions  by  correcting  and  de- 
veloping the  idealism  of  Berkeley,  which  seems  to  have 
formed  the  real  starting-point  of  his  own  thinking,  and 
in  which,  as  thus  corrected  and  developed,  he  found  the 
substitute  for  the  misleading  views  of  Reid  and  Hamilton. 
It  was  probably  not  so  much  the  substance  as  the  form 
of  Ferrier's  system,  different  as  the  latter  really  is  from 
that  of  Hegel,  that  suggested  the  author's  indebtedness  to 
the  great  German  idealist.  In  the  Institutes  of  Metaphysic 
(1854),  the  argument  is  stated  in  a  series  of  propositions, 
each  of  which  is  demonstrated  and  made  the  basis  of  those 
which  follow,  after  the  manner  of  Euclid  or  Spinoza, 
rather  than  that  of  Hegel.  On  reading  the  book.  Mill 
wrote  :  '  His  fabric  of  speculation  is  so  effectively  con- 
structed, and  imposing,  that  it  almost  ranks  as  a  work 
of  art.  It  is  the  romance  of  logic.'*  In  some  ways, 
however,  the  form  militates  against  the  effectiveness  of 
the  argument,  giving  it  an  air  of  artificiality,  diminish- 
ing its  cumulative  force  and,  in  spite  of  the  directness, 
lucidity,  and  strength  of  the  style,  seriously  detracting  from 
the  literary  quality  of  the  work.  In  literary  quality,  as 
well  as  in  freshness  and  spontaneity  and  in  breadth  and 
richness  of  treatment,  the  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of 
Consciousness,  originally  published  as  a  series  of  articles  in 
Blackwood  in  1838-39,  must  be  placed  higher;  nor  can 
it  be  said  that  the  later  statement  adds  anything  of  material 

^  Remains,  i.  486.  *  Institutes,  p.  40. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  91.  *  Letters,  i.  184. 


FERRIER  335 

value  to  the  earlier  argument.  In  both  works  there  is 
a  certain  tendency  to  iteration  and  over-elaboration,  in 
part  the  result  of  the  author's  facility  of  expression  and 
tendency  to  rhetorical  exaggeration.  But  the  notable 
absence  of  pedantry  and  technicality  and  the  general 
smoothness  and  crispness  of  the  statement  atone  in  great 
measure  for  any  such  defects ;  and  the  writer  never 
forgets  his  undertaking  to  make  clear  the  successive  steps 
in  the  logical  process  of  the  argument. 

In  an  essay  on  *  Berkeley  and  Idealism,'  published  in 
1842,  perhaps  Ferrier's  most  perfect  piece  of  philosophical 
writing,  he  signalises  both  the  essential  truth  and  the 
essential  defect  in  a  theory  which  was  at  the  time  much 
less  understood  than  it  is  now.  Berkeley,  he  says, 
*  certainly  was  the  first  to  stamp  the  indelible  impress  of 
his  powerful  understanding  on  those  principles  of  our 
nature,  which,  since  his  time,  have  brightened  into  im- 
perishable truths  in  the  light  of  genuine  speculation. 
His  genius  was  the  first  to  swell  the  current  of  that  mighty 
stream  of  tendency  towards  which  all  modern  meditation 
flows,  the  great  gulf-stream  of  Absolute  Idealism.'  The 
element  of  peculiar  value  in  Berkeley's  speculation  is  its  con- 
creteness,  its  faithfulness  to  reality.  *  The  peculiar  endow- 
ment by  which  Berkeley  was  distinguished,  far  beyond  his 
predecessors  and  contemporaries,  and  far  beyond  almost 
every  philosopher  who-  has  succeeded  him,  was  the  eye 
he  had  for  facts^  and  the  singular  pertinacity  with  which 
he  refused  to  be  dislodged  from  his  hold  upon  them.  .  .  . 
No  man  ever  delighted  less  to  expatiate  in  the  regions  of 
the  occult,  the  abstract,  the  impalpable,  the  fanciful,  and 
the  unknown.  His  heart  and  soul  clung  with  inseparable 
tenacity  to  the  concrete  realties  of  the  universe ;  and  with 
an  eye  uninfluenced  by  spurious  theories,  and  unperverted 
by  false  knowledge,  he  saw  directly  into  the  very  life  of 
things.'  *  His  theory  needs  only  to  be  widened,  and  thus 
corrected,  to  provide  the  true  explanation  of  which  phil- 
osophy is  in   search.     How  this  is  to  be  done,  is  more 

^  Remains,  ii.  293-4. 


336         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

clearly  stated  in  the  Institutes.  *  He  saw  that  something 
subjective  was  a  necessary  and  inseparable  part  of  every 
object  of  cognition.  But  instead  of  maintaining  that 
it  was  the  ego  or  oneself  which  clove  inseparably  to  all 
that  could  be  known,  and  that  this  element  must  be 
thought  of  along  with  all  that  is  thought  of,  he  rather 
held  that  it  was  the  senses,  or  our  perceptive  modes  of 
cognition,  which  clove  inseparably  to  all  that  could  be 
known,  and  that  these  required  to  be  thought  of  along 
with  all  that  could  be  thought  of.  These,  just  as  much 
as  the  ego,  were  held  by  him  to  be  the  subjective  part 
of  the  total  synthesis  of  cognition  which  could  not  by  any 
possibility  be  discounted.  Hence  the  unsatisfactory  char- 
acter of  his  ontology,  which,  when  tried  by  the  test  of 
a  rigorous  logic,  will  be  found  to  invest  the  Deity — the 
supreme  mind,  the  infinite  ego,  which  the  terms  of  his 
system  necessarily  compel  him  to  place  in  synthesis  with 
all  things — with  human  modes  of  apprehension,  with 
such  senses  as  belong  to  man — and  to  invest  Him  with 
these,  not  as  a  matter  of  contingency,  but  as  a  matter 
of  necessity.  Our  only  safety  lies  in  the  consideration — 
a  consideration  which  is  a  sound,  indeed  inevitable  logical 
inference — that  our  sensitive  modes  of  apprehension  are 
mere  contingent  elements  and  conditions  of  cognition  ; 
and  that  the  ego  or  subject  alone  enters,  of  necessity,  into 
the  composition  of  everything  which  any  intelligence  can 
know.'  ^ 

Although  there  are  occasional  references  to  Kant  in 
Ferrier's  works,  he  develops  his  theory  through  a  con- 
tinuous criticism  of  Reid,  on  the  one  hand,  and  of  Hamilton, 
on  the  other.  Reid  is,  for  him,  the  representative  of 
Psychology  or  the  Science  of  the  human  mind,'  and 
therefore,  despite  his  own  protestations  to  the  contrary, 
of  '  Rcpresentationism.'  Hamilton  is  the  representative 
of  Agnosticism,  or  the  doctrine  of  the  unknowableness 
of  the  Absolute  Reality.  Against  the  former  view,  he 
argues  that  we  have  a  direct  knowledge  of  Reality,  both 

1  Institutes,  pp.  389,  390. 


FERRIER  337 

material  and  spiritual ;  against  the  latter,  he  formulates 
his '  agnoiology '  or '  theory  of  ignorance,'  to  prove  that  the 
*  ignorance '  of  which  Hamilton  would  convict  the  human 
mind  is  not  properly  called  ignorance  or  defect,  but  is  simply 
that  repudiation  of  the  unintelligible  or  self-contradictory 
which  is  the  essential  characteristic  of  intelligence,  rather 
than  a  defect  peculiar  to  the  human  mind. 

The  fundamental  error  of  Psychology  is  the  acceptance 
of  sensation,  or  the  '  state  of  consciousness,'  as  the  original 
datum  of  knowledge,  the  consequence  being  that  the 
inference  to  the  existence  of  the  object,  as  well  as  to 
the  subject,  is  more  or  less  uncertain.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  the  subject  and  the  object  are  inseparable.  *  Matter 
per  se '  is  never  the  object  of  knowledge ;  what  we 
perceive  is  always  '  Matter  mecum^  The  elementary 
fact  of  knowledge  is  not  matter,  but  the  perception  of 
matter,  or  the  subject  as  conscious  of  the  object,  either 
subjective  or  objective.  Mere  'phenomena'  never  exist; 
what  exists  is  always  phenomenal  to  a  self  or  subject. 
If  we  define  *■  substance '  as  that  which  is  capable  of 
existing,  or  of  being  conceived,  alone  and  independently, 
then  the  conscious  self,  that  is,  the  subject  as  conscious 
of  an  object,  is  substance,  and  can  be  known.  The 
ego  cannot  know  objects  without  knowing  itself  along 
with  them ;  it  cannot  know  itself  except  along  with 
objects.  It  is  because  the  psychologists  have  ignored 
the  conscious,  or  rather  the  self-conscious  self,  which  is 
present  in  all  knowledge,  that  they  have  been  unable  to 
escape  the  conclusion  that  all  we  know  is  *  ideas '  or 
'phenomena'  which  represent,  and  may  misrepresent,  the 
object  or  substantial  reality. 

For  the  refutation  of  the  Hamiltonian  doctrine  of 
the  Relativity  of  Knowledge,  Ferrier  formulated  what 
he  regarded  as  an  entirely  original  '  theory  of  ignorance.' 
Ignorance,  he  holds,  presupposes  the  possibility  of  know- 
ledge ;  we  can  be  ignorant  only  of  that  which  it  is 
possible  for  us  to  know.  It  is  not  a  defect,  but  a  merit 
of  knowledge  not  to  know  that  which  cannot  be  known 
because  it  is  the  unintelligible  or  the  self-contradictory. 

Y 


338         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Now  we  have  seen  that  subject  and  object,  or  mind 
and  matter,  per  se^  are  both  alike  unknowable  in  this 
sense ;  since  they  are  never  presented  in  consciousness 
alone  but  always  together,  it  follows  that  they  cannot 
be  represented  or  thought  in  separation  from  one  another. 
It  is  of  such  an  inconceivable  or  unintelligible  reality 
that  Hamilton  proclaims  that  ignorance  is  inevitable  ;  he 
might  as  well  proclaim  the  unknowableness  of  Nothing, 
or  of  Nonsense.  It  is  the  glory,  rather  than  the  humilia- 
tion, of  intelligence  to  repudiate  the  unintelligible  or 
self-contradictory. 

On  the  basis  of  this  *  epistemology '  and  *  agnoiology  ' 
Ferrier  proceeds  to  construct  his  *  ontology.'  Self-conscious 
mind,  the  ultimate  element  in  knowledge,  is  also  the 
ultimate  element  in  existence.  Repudiating  the  errors 
of  subjective  idealism,  he  finds  himself  compelled  to  accept 
absolute  or  objective  idealism.  The  individual  ego,  along 
with  the  universe  of  his  thought,  is  not  independent. 
*  The  only  independent  universe  which  any  mind  or 
ego  can  think  of  is  the  universe  in  synthesis  with  some 
other  mind  or  ego,'  ^  And  since  one  such  other  mind  is 
sufficient  to  account  for  the  universe  of  our  experience, 
we  are  warranted  in  inferring  that  there  is  only  one. 
Ferrier  thus  summarises  the  argument  which  yields  'this 
theistic  conclusion '  :  *  Speculation  shows  us  that  the 
universe,  by  itself,  is  the  contradictory ;  that  it  is  in- 
capable of  self-subsistency,  that  it  can  exist  only  cum  alioy 
that  all  true  and  cogitable  and  non-contradictory  exist- 
ence is  a  synthesis  of  the  subjective  and  the  objective; 
and  then  we  are  compelled,  by  the  most  stringent  neces- 
sity of  thinking,  to  conceive  a  supreme  intelligence  as 
the  ground  and  essence  of  the  Universal  Whole.  Thus 
the  postulation  of  the  Deity  is  not  only  permissible,  it 
is  unavoidable.  Every  mind  thinks,  and  must  think  of 
God  (however  little  conscious  it  may  be  of  the  opera- 
tion which  it  is  performing),  whenever  it  thinks  of 
anything  as  lying  beyond  all  human  observation,  or  as 

^  Institutes,  Pt.  i.  Prop.  xiii. 


JOHN   GROTE  339 

subsisting  in  the  absence  or  annihilation  of  all  finite  in- 
telligences.' ^ 

The  ethical  implications  of  such  an  idealism  are  strik- 
ingly suggested  in  the  Philosophy  of  ConsciousnesSy  where 
the  parallelism  between  the  functions  of  self-conscious- 
ness in  the  intellectual  and  in  the  moral  spheres  is  made 
clear,  and  it  is  shown  that  'just  as  all  perception  origin- 
ates in  the  antagonism  between  consciousness  and  our 
sensations,  so  all  morality  originates  in  the  antagonism 
between  consciousness  and  the  passions,  desires,  or  inclina- 
tions of  the  natural  man.'  ^  It  is  in  this  refusal  to  accept 
the  guidance  of  the  natural  passions  and  inclinations,  this 
*  direct  antithesis '  of  the  '  I '  to  the  '  natural  man,'  that 
our  moral  freedom  consists.  What  is  this  supreme  act 
by  which  man  asserts  his  supremacy  over  nature,  within 
and  without  himself?  'What  is  it  but  the  act  of  con- 
sciousness, the  act  of  becoming  "  I,"  the  act  of  placing 
ourselves  in  the  room  which  sensation  and  passion  have 
been  made  to  vacate  ?  This  act  may  be  obscure  in  the 
extreme,  but  still  it  is  an  act  of  the  most  practical  kind, 
both  in  itself  and  in  its  results.  .  .  .  For  what  act  can 
be  more  vitally  practical  than  the  act  by  which  we  -ealise 
our  existence  as  free  personal  beings  ?  and  what  act  can 
be  attended  by  a  more  practical  result  than  the  act  by 
which  we  look  our  passions  in  the  face,  and,  in  the  very 
act  of  looking  at  them,  look  them  down  ?  '  ^ 

An  interesting  statement  of  an  essentially  idealistic  view 
is  worked  out  with  great  independence  by  another  English 
thinker,  John  Grote,  Knightbridge  professor  of  moral 
philosophy,  in  succession  to  Whewell,  at  Cambridge  from 
1855  to  1866,  in  his  Exploratio  Philosophical  the  first  part 
of  which  was  published  in  1865,  the  year  before  the 
author's  death.  Grote  called  the  work,  modestly  but 
truthfully,  'rough  notes,'  and  its  unfinished  literary  form 
is  doubtless  largely  responsible  for  the  neglect  which  has 
been  its  fate.     It  contains,  however,  much  vigorous  and 

1  Institutes,  p.  512.  *  Remains,  ii.  208.  '  Ibid.,  ii.  201. 


340         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

suggestive  thinking,  and  leaves  the  impression  of  distinct 
speculative  power.  The  author's  own  positions  are  de- 
veloped by  the  discussion  of  the  views  of  such  English 
writers  as  Ferrier,  Hamilton,  Mill,  and  Whewell.  His 
point  of  view  is  clearly  idealistic,  and  closely  akin  to  that 
of  Ferrier.  Speaking  of  his  own  theory  of  knowledge, 
he  says,  *I  think  Mr.  Ferrier,  with  a  manner  of  ex- 
pression of  his  own,  and  a  more  ambitious,  perhaps 
a  better,  method,  does  not  in  its  great  features  differ 
from  it.'  1  He  thus  states  the  great  alternative  of  meta- 
physical thought  as  it  has  been  formulated  in  the  move- 
ment of  English  philosophy,  and  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  as 
to  his  own  decision.  '  The  difference  as  to  philosophical 
view  which  is  a  real  and  fundamental  one,  whereas  almost 
all  differences  which  cannot  be  resolved  into  this  have  in 
them  more  or  less  of  vagueness  and  mutual  misunder- 
standing, is  that. between  what  I  have  called  "positivism" 
on  the  one  side,  and  on  the  other  a  view  contrasted  with 
this,  which  has  no  single  name,  though  in  application  to 
ethics  I  should  call  it  "idealism."  The  point  of  the 
difference  is  that  in  the  former  we  look  upon  what  we 
can  find  out  by  physical  research  as  ultimate  fact,  so  far 
as  we  are  concerned,  and  upon  conformity  with  it  as  the 
test  of  truth  ;  so  that  nothing  is  admitted  as  true  except 
so  far  as  it  follows  by  some  process  of  inference  from  this. 
In  opposition  to  this,  the  contrasted  view  is  to  the  effect, 
that  for  philosophy,  for  our  entire  judgment  about  things, 
we  must  go  beyond  this,  or  rather  go  further  back  than 
it,  the  ultimate  fact  really  (however  for  the  purposes  of 
physical  science  we  may  assume  the  former)  for  us — 
the  basis  upon  which  all  rests — being  not  that  things 
exist,  but  that  we  know  them,  i.e.  think  of  them  as  ex- 
isting. ...  In  the  former  view,  knowledge  about  things  is 
looked  upon  as  a  possibly  supervening  accident  to  them  or 
of  them  ;  in  the  latter  view,  their  knowableness  is  a  part, 
and  the  most  important  part,  of  their  reality  or  essential 
being.     In  the  former  view,  mind  is  supposed  to  follow, 

^  Exploraiio,  pt.  i.,  p.  56. 


JOHN   GROTE  341 

desultorily  and  accidentally,  after  matter  of  fact ;  in  the 
latter  view  mind  or  consciousness  begins  with  recognising 
itself  as  a  part  of  an  entire  supposed  matter  of  fact  or 
universe,  and  next  as  correspondent,  in  its  subjective 
character,  to  the  whole  of  this  besides  as  object,  while 
the  understanding  of  this  latter  as  known^  germinates  into 
the  notion  of  the  recognition  of  other  mind  or  reason 
init'i 

One  of  Grote's  leading  distinctions  is  that  between 
what  he  calls  *  knowledge  of  acquaintance,'  mere  aware- 
ness or  knowledge  of^  and  *  knowledge  of  judgment,' 
logical  or  conceptual  knowledge,  or  knowledge  about. 
The  former  is  that  immediate  or  intuitive  apprehension 
of  reality  without  which  no  knowledge  is  possible,  and  in 
which  the  distinctions  of  our  later  conceptual  knowledge 
are  already  implicit.  This  contrast  must  not  be  mis- 
conceived as  one  between  matter  and  form,  or  things  and 
thought,  as  if  the  object  gave  the  one  and  the  subject  the 
other.  The  thing  or  object  is  simply  the  datum  of 
immediate  experience  understood  or  interpreted.  Thought 
is  not  the  reading  of  relations  into  the  chaotic  or  unrelated 
material  of  sensation,  but  the  discovery  of  the  relations 
actually  present  in  the  world  of  our  experience  ;  the  re- 
cognition, by  the  mind  of  the  knowing  subject,  of  the  mind 
or  reason  in  the  universe  of  reality.  This  distinction  is 
also  described  by  Grote  as  one  between  *  immediateness  ' 
and  '  reflection,'  the  reflective  being  identified  with  the 
philosophical  point  of  view,  and  *  positivism '  being  con- 
demned as  an  attempt  to  rest  in  the  immediacy  of  ex- 
perience as  ultimate. 

3.  Absolute  Idealism  :  Later  Versions — Stirlingy  Cairdy 
Greeriy  Bradley 

In  1865,  the  year  after  the  death  of  Ferrier,  there 
appeared  a  work  which  marked  the  inauguration  of  a  new 
era  in  the  development  of  English  idealism.  This  was 
The  Secret  of  Hegel,  by   James    Hutchison    Stirling.     In 

^  Exploratio,  pt.  i.,  p.  59. 


342         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

an  article  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  October  1867  (re- 
published in  the  volume  Jerrold^  Tennyson^  and  Macaulay) 
the  author  passes  a  ruthless  condemnation  upon  the 
spurious  reputation  for  a  knowledge  of  German  idealism 
which  had  attached  itself  to  the  name  of  Coleridge,  as 
well  as,  in  a  minor  degree,  to  that  of  De  Quincey,  and 
fastens  especially  upon  Coleridge's  '  dreamy  misapprehen- 
sions '  and  '  strange  misrepresentations '  of  the  Kantian 
philosophy.  Himself  profoundly  convinced  of  the  truth 
of  the  Hegelian  system,  he  set  himself,  in  the  Secret^  to 
explain  and  defend  that  system.  Stirling  undoubtedly 
possessed  *the  temperament  of  genius,'  and  was  a  man 
of  remarkable  speculative  insight ;  but  his  style,  though 
often  striking,  is  so  marked  by  the  influence  of  Carlyle, 
and  he  so  resolutely  declines  to  conform  to  ordinary 
standards  of  systematic  exposition,  that  his  work  is  almost 
as  difficult  as  the  original  which  it  is  intended  to  illumi- 
nate. Yet  its  importance,  and  its  influence  at  the  time 
of  its  appearance,  are  not  to  be  underestimated ;  it 
certainly  called  the  attention  of  the  English-speaking  world 
to  the  significance  of  a  system  which  even  Ferrier  had 
pronounced  unintelligible,  and  brought  home  to  the 
English  mind  the  necessity  of  coming  to  terms,  not  only 
with  Hegel,  but  with  his  predecessors,  Kant,  Fichte,  and 
Schelling.  For  Stirling  insisted  upon  going  back  to  the 
origins  of  Hegelianism  in  these  earlier  systems,  and  in 
1 88 1  he  followed  up  the  Secret  of  Hegel  with  the  Text- 
book to  Kanty  in  which  the  defects  of  the  earlier  work 
were  less  apparent  and  in  which  he  supported  a  one- 
sided interpretation  of  the  Kantian  philosophy,  as  re- 
presented by  the  first  two  divisions  of  the  Critique  of 
Pure  Reason^  with  great  learning  and  with  remarkable 
ability.  His  translation  of  Schwegler's  History  of  Philosophy^ 
published  in  1867,  which  passed  through  many  editions 
and  was  used  by  many  generations  of  students,  contains 
a  series  of  illuminating  'annotations'  which  rival  in 
interest  and  value  the  substance  of  the  History  itself.  A 
little  volume  of  lectures  on  The  Philosophy  of  Law  (1873) 
and    the     GifFord    lectures    on    Philosophy    and    Theology 


EDWARD   CAIRD  343 

(1890)  complete  the  list  of  Stirling's  more  important 
contributions  to  philosophy.  The  standpoint  is  always 
the  same — that  of  the  Hegelian  idealism,  which  Stirling 
is  inclined  to  interpret  in  a  theistic  rather  than  in  a 
pantheistic  sense. 

The  Secret  was  followed  by  a  long  series  of  works 
devoted  to  the  same  purpose  of  acquainting  the  insular 
English  mind  with  the  meaning  of  the  German  idealistic 
systems.  Of  these  the  most  notable,  as  expositions  of  Kant 
and  Hegel,  were  Edward  Caird's  Philosophy  of  Kant  (1878) 
and  The  Critical  Philosophy  of  Immanuel  Kant  (1889), 
William  Wallace's  translations,  with  Prolegomena,  of 
Hegel's  Logic  (1874)  and  of  the  Philosophy  of  Mind  (1894), 
and  Caird's  little  volume  on  Hegel  in  Blackwood's  '  Philo- 
sophical Classics'  (1883).  Caird's  works  on  Kant  are, 
however,  by  no  means  merely  expository  ;  they  are  critical 
in  the  sense  of  correcting  the  Kantian  philosophy  in  the 
light  of  what  the  writer  regards  as  its  deeper  principles, 
which  were  only  imperfectly  grasped  by  Kant  himself, 
and  the  comprehension  of  which  delivers  us  from  the 
limitations  of  the  Kantian  philosophy.  While,  especially 
in  the  second  and  larger  work,  Caird  bestowed  immense 
pains  upon  the  investigation  of  the  actual  text  of  the 
Critiques^  as  well  as  of  the  gradual  development  of  Kant's 
thought,  as  shown  in  earlier  works,  his  ulterior  purpose,  in 
both  books,  is  to  use  Kant  as  a  stepping-stone  to  what  he 
regards  as  the  more  adequate  system  of  Hegel.  In  his 
lectures  from  the  chair  of  moral  philosophy  in  the  Uni- 
versity of  Glasgow  from  1866  to  1893,  and  afterwards  as 
Master  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford,  as  well  as  in  his  Gifford 
lectures  on  The  Evolution  of  Religion  (1892)  and  The 
Evolution  of  Theology  in  the  Greek  Philosophers  (1903),  he 
used  Hegelianism  with  great  effectiveness  as  a  point  of 
view  from  which  to  interpret  the  movement  of  philosophi- 
cal and  religious  thought,  and  as  a  weapon  with  which  to 
withstand  the  materialistic  and  agnostic  tendencies  of  the 
time.  Discarding  the  technical  details  of  the  system,  and 
availing  himself  of  its  essential  method,  he  sought  to 
substitute  concrete  for  abstract  thinking  and  to  reconcile 


344         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

the  contradictions  of  the  scientific  understanding  in  the 
higher  synthesis  of  the  speculative  reason.  It  was  the 
same  work  which  Ferrier  had  attempted  with  less  ade- 
quate historical  outfit ;  and  while  the  inspiration  always 
obviously  came  from  Hegel,  Caird's  own  words  are  true  of 
himself:  'The  literal  importation  of  Kant  and  Hegel 
into  another  country  and  time  would  not  be  possible  if  it 
were  desirable,  or  desirable  if  it  were  possible.  The  mere 
change  of  time  and  place,  if  there  were  nothing  more, 
implies  new  questions  and  a  new  attitude  of  mind  in  those 
whom  the  writer  addresses,  which  would  make  a  bare 
reproduction  unmeaning.  Moreover,  this  change  of  the 
mental  atmosphere  and  environment  is  itself  part  of  a 
development  which  must  affect  the  doctrine  also,  if  it  is  no 
mere  dead  tradition,  but  a  seed  of  new  intellectual  life. 
Any  one  who  writes  about  philosophy  must  have  his  work 
judged,  not  by  its  relation  to  the  intellectual  wants  of  a 
past  generation,  but  by  its  power  to  meet  the  wants  of  the 
present  time — wants  which  arise  out  of  the  advance  of 
science,  and  the  new  currents  of  influence  which  are 
transforming  man's  social  and  religious  life.'  ^  Judged  by 
such  a  standard,  Caird's  contribution  to  the  English 
philosophical  thought  of  his  time  must  be  accorded  great 
value  and  importance. 

In  Caird's  own  judgment,  however,  as  expressed  in  the 
same  place,  Thomas  Hill  Green,  to  whose  memory  the 
volume  is  dedicated,  was  '  an  author  who,  perhaps  more 
than  any  recent  writer  on  philosophy,  has  shown  that  it 
is  possible  to  combine  a  thorough  appropriation  of  the 
results  of  past  speculation  with  the  freshness  and  spon- 
taneity of  an  original  mind.'  His  philosophy  is  no  mere 
reproduction  of  German  idealism,  even  in  the  sense  in 
which  Caird's  work  must  be  so  described.  While  his '  whole 
work  was  devoted,'  as  the  latter  writer  says,  *  to  the 
development  of  the  results  of  the  Kantian  criticism  of 
knowledge  and  morals,'  he  cannot  justly  be  described  as  a 

^  Preface  to  Essays  in  Philosophical  Criticism,  edited  by  A.  Seth  and 
R.  B.  Haldane  (1883). 


T.   H.   GREEN  345 

disciple  of  Hegel.  *To  Hegel  he  latterly  stood  in  a 
somewhat  doubtful  relation  ;  for  while,  in  the  main,  he 
accepted  Hegel's  criticism  of  Kant,  and  held  also  that 
something  like  Hegel's  idealism  must  be  the  result  of  the 
development  of  Kantian  principles  rightly  understood,  he 
yet  regarded  the  actual  Hegelian  system  with  a  certain 
suspicion  as  something  too  ambitious,  or,  at  least,  premature. 
"  It  must  all  be  done  over  again,"  he  once  said,  meaning 
that  the  first  development  of  idealistic  thought  in  Germany 
had  in  some  degree  anticipated  what  can  be  the  secure 
result  only  of  wider  knowledge  and  more  complete 
reflexion.'  In  a  review,  published  in  1880,  of  John 
Caird's  Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Religion^  which, 
he  says,  '  represents  a  thorough  assimilation  by  an  eminent 
Scotch  theologian,  who  is  also  known  as  a  most  power- 
ful preacher  and  writer,  of  Hegel's  "  Philosophy  of  Re- 
ligion," '  Green  thus  defines  his  own  attitude  to  Hegelian 
idealism.  '  Hegel's  doctrine  has  been  before  the  world  now 
for  half  a  century,  and  though  it  has  affected  the  current 
science  and  philosophy  to  a  degree  which  those  who 
depreciate  it  seem  curiously  to  ignore,  yet  as  a  doctrine 
it  has  not  made  way.  It  may  be  doubted  whether  ic  has 
thoroughly  satisfied  even  those  among  us  who  regard  it  as 
the  last  word  of  philosophy.  When  we  think  out  the 
problem  left  by  previous  inquirers,  we  find  ourselves  led  to 
it  by  an  intellectual  necessity  ;  but  on  reflection  we  become 
aware  that  we  are  Hegelian,  so  to  speak,  with  only  a 
fraction  of  our  thoughts — on  the  Sundays  of"  speculation," 
not  on  the  weekdays  of  "  ordinary  thought "  ;  and  even  if 
we  silence  all  suspicion  as  to  the  truth  and  value  of  the 
"  speculation,"  we  still  feel  the  need  of  some  such  media- 
tion between  speculative  truth  and  our  judgments  con- 
cerning matters  of  fact  as  will  help  philosophy  to  come 
to  an  understanding  with  science,  and  either  to  answer 
those  questions  of  "Whence"  and  "Whither"  which  the 
facts  of  the  world  suggest  to  us,  or  explain  why  they  are 
inexplicable.'  ^ 

^  Works,  iii.  141 -2. 


346         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

Although  Green  did  not  himself  *  do  it  all  over  again,' 
he  did  make  a  serious  effort  so  to  restate  the  idealistic 
position  as  to  free  it  from  the  difficulties  suggested  in 
the  above  criticism :  and  we  have  the  result  in  the 
Prolegomena  to  Ethics^  published  posthumously  in  1883. 
The  presupposition  of  a  theory  of  ethics  is,  he  holds,  the 
demonstration  of  the  spiritual  nature  of  man  ;  a  '  natural 
science  of  man,'  such  as  that  from  which  Spencer  had 
recently  attempted  to  deduce  the  '  data  of  ethics,'  seemed 
to  Green  to  contradict  the  very  idea  of  ethics.  Accord- 
ingly he  devotes  the  first  book  of  his  treatise  to  the 
investigation  of  '  the  metaphysics  of  knowledge,'  his  object 
being  to  show  that  there  is  a  '  spiritual  principle '  in 
knowledge,  and  therefore  in  nature.  Like  Ferrier,  he 
insists  upon  the  necessity  of  postulating  a  self-conscious 
and  self-differentiating  subject  at  the  heart  of  knowledge, 
showing  that  Reality,  as  known,  is  a  '  system  of  relations ' 
which  presupposes  the  synthetic  activity  of  the  self.  The 
finite  subject  of  knowledge,  whose  function  it  is  to  relate 
or  think  the  data  of  sensation,  and  thus  to  constitute  out 
of  them  objects  of  knowledge,  and  a  world  of  such  objects, 
is  the  reproduction  in  time  of  that  Eternal  Consciousness 
which  alone  can  account  at  once  for  the  intelligibility  of 
nature  and  for  our  intellectual  understanding  of  it.  The 
significance  of  such  a  view  is  pointedly  suggested  in  the 
review  from  which  I  have  already  quoted.  *  To  assume, 
because  all  reality  requires  thought  to  conceive  it,  that 
therefore  thought  is  the  condition  of  its  existence,  is, 
indeed,  unwarrantable.  But  it  is  another  matter  if,  when 
we  come  to  examine  the  constituents  of  that  which  we 
account  real — the  determinations  of  things — we  find  that 
they  all  imply  some  synthetic  action  which  we  only  know 
as  exercised  by  our  own  spirit.  Is  it  not  true  of  all  of 
them  that  they  have  their  being  in  relations ;  and  what 
other  medium  do  we  know  of  but  a  thinking  conscious- 
ness in  and  through  which  the  separate  can  be  united  in 
that  way  which  constitutes  relation  ?  We  believe  that 
these  questions  cannot  be  worked  out  without  leading  to 
the  conclusion  that  the  real  world  is  essentially  a  spiritual 


T.    H.   GREEN  347 

world,  which  forms  one  inter-related  whole  because  related 
throughout  to  a  single  subject.  .  .   .  But  when  we  have 
satisfied  ourselves  that  the  world  in  its  truth  or  full  reality 
is  spiritual,   because  on  no  other  supposition  is  its  unity 
explicable,  we  may  still  have  to  confess  that  a  knowledge 
of  it   in   its  spiritual   reality — such  a  knowledge  of  it  as 
would  be  a  knowledge  of  God — is  impossible  to  us.     To 
know  God  we  must  be  God.     The  unifying  principle  of 
the  world  is  indeed  in  us  ;  it  is  our  self.     But,  as  in  us,  it 
is  so  conditioned  by  a  particular  animal  nature  that,  while 
it  yields  that  idea  of  the  world  as  one  which  regulates  all 
our    knowledge,  our  actual  knowledge  remains  a  piece- 
meal process.     We  spell  out  the  relations  of  things  one 
by  one  ;  we  pass  from  condition  to  condition,  from  effect 
to  effect ;  but,  as  one  fragment  of  truth  is  grasped,  another 
has   escaped  us,  and  we  never  reach  that  totality  of  ap- 
prehension   through    which   alone   we   could    know    the 
world  as  it  is  and  God  in  it.     This  is  the  infirmity  of  our 
discursive  understanding.     If  in  one  sense  it  reveals  God, 
in  another  it  hides  him.     Language  which  seems  to  imply 
its    identification    with   God,    or   with    the    world    in   its 
spiritual  reality,  can  lead  to  nothing  but  confusion.'     On 
the  other  hand,  *  that  there  is  one  spiritual  self-conscious 
being,  of  which  all  that  is  real  is  the  activity  or  expres- 
sion ;  that  we  are  related  to  this  spiritual  being,  not  merely 
as  parts  of  the  world  which  is  its  expression,  but  as  par- 
takers in  some  inchoate  measure  of  the  self-consciousness 
through    which    it  at  once  constitutes  and   distinguishes 
itself  from  the  world  ;  that  this  participation  is  the  source 
of  morality  and   religion  ;  this  we  take   to  be  the  vital 
truth  which  Hegel  had  to  teach.'  ^ 

As  the  self  transforms  impressions  of  sense  into  objects 
of  knowledge,  so  it  transforms  mere  animal  wants  into 
motives  of  action.  A  motive  is  an  idea  of  personal  good, 
constituted  by  the  identification  of  the  self  with  some 
solicitation  of  sensibility,  this  activity  of  the  self  establish- 
ing man's  freedom  in  the  moral  as  well  as  in  the  intellec- 

^  Works,  iii.,  145-6. 


348  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

tual  life.  The  activity  is  in  both  cases  ahke  spiritual,  an 
activity  of  thought,  speculative  and  practical,  by  which  in 
the  one  case  we  idealise  the  real  and  in  the  other  realise 
the  ideal.  The  good,  the  idea  of  which  is  the  motive  of 
all  virtuous  action,  is  a  common  or  social,  while  it  is  at 
the  same  time  a  personal  good.  '  Social  life  is  to  person- 
ality what  language  is  to  thought.'  ^  Man,  as  a  social 
being,  is  his  own  end.  *It  is  only  in  himself  as  he  may 
become,  in  a  complete  realisation  of  what  he  has  it  in 
him  to  be,  in  his  perfect  character,  that  he  can  find 
satisfaction.'  What  this  perfection  is  in  detail  we  know 
only  according  to  the  measure  of  what  we  have  so  far 
done  or  are  doing  for  its  attainment.  And  this  is  to  say 
that  we  have  no  knowledge  of  the  perfection  of  man  as 
the  unconditional  good,  but  that  which  we  have  of  his 
goodness  or  the  good  will,  in  the  form  which  it  has 
assumed  as  a  means  to,  or  in  the  effort  after,  the  uncon- 
ditional good  ;  a  good  which  is  not  an  object  of  specula- 
tive knowledge  to  man,  but  of  which  the  idea — the 
conviction  of  there  being  such  a  thing — is  the  influence 
through  which  his  life  is  directed  to  its  attainment.'  ^ 

The  inevitable  correlate  of  the  moral  as  of  the  intel- 
lectual life  is  God.  The  moral  ideal  implies  *  the  eternal 
realisation  for,  or  in,  the  eternal  mind  of  the  capacities 
gradually  realised  in  time.  ...  A  state  of  life  or  con- 
sciousness not  yet  attained  by  a  subject  capable  of  it,  in 
relation  to  that  subject  we  say  actually  is  not ;  but  if  there 
were  no  consciousness  for  which  it  existed,  there  would 
be  no  sense  in  saying  that  in  possibility  it  is^  for  it  would 
simply  be  nothing  at  all.'  It  follows  that  *  there  must  be 
eternally  such  a  subject  which  is  all  that  the  self-con- 
scious subject,  as  developed  in  time,  has  the  possibility  of 
becoming ;  in  which  the  idea  of  the  human  spirit,  or  all 
that  it  has  in  itself  to  become,  is  completely  realised. 
This  consideration  may  suggest  the  true  notion  of  the 
spiritual  relation  in  which  we  stand  to  God  ;  that  He  is 
not  merely  a  Being  who  has  made  us,  in  the  sense  that  we 

*  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  sect.  183.  •  Ibid.,  sect.  195. 


F.   H.   BRADLEY  349 

exist  as  an  object  of  the  divine  consciousness  in  the  same 
way  in  which  we  must  suppose  the  system  of  nature  so  to 
exist,  but  that  He  is  a  Being  in  whom  we  exist ;  with 
whom  we  are  in  principle  one  ;  with  whom  the  human 
spirit  is  identical,  in  the  sense  that  He  is  all  which  the 
human  spirit  is  capable  of  becoming.'  ^ 

Finally,  the  capacity  of  moral  development  being 
synonymous  with  that  of  personal  development,  the 
personal  immortality  of  man  as  a  developing  moral  being 
seems  to  follow  as  a  necessary  consequence.  *  A  capacity 
consisting  in  a  self-conscious  personality  cannot  be  sup- 
posed ...  to  pass  away.  It  partakes  of  the  nature  of 
the  eternal.  .  .  .  We  cannot  believe  in  there  being  a  real 
fulfilment  of  such  a  capacity  in  an  end  which  should 
involve  its  extinction,  because  the  conviction  of  there 
being  an  end  in  which  our  capacities  are  fulfilled  is 
founded  on  our  self-conscious  personality — on  the  idea  of 
an  absolute  value  in  a  spirit  which  we  ourselves  are. 
And  for  the  same  reason  we  cannot  believe  that  the 
capacities  of  men  .  .  .  can  be  really  fulfilled  in  a  state  of 
things  in  which  any  rational  man  should  be  treated 
merely  as  a  means,  and  not  as  in  himself  an  end.'  - 

The  latest,  and  perhaps  we  may  venture  to  say  the 
most  important,  statement  of  Absolute  Idealism  in 
English  philosophy  is  that  of  Mr.  F.  H.  Bradley,  who  in 
his  Appearance  and  Reality  (1893)  offers  an  interpretation 
of  the  theory  which  differs  materially  from  that  of  his 
predecessors.  The  greater  subtlety  of  the  thought  is 
reflected  in  the  greater  compactness  and  luminousness  of 
the  style,  as  compared  with  Green.  While  far  from 
aiming  at  literary  effect,  and  always  trusting  to  the 
essential  interest  of  the  argument  as  an  appeal  to  the 
reader,  Mr.  Bradley  is  never  unnecessarily  obscure,  and  on 
occasion  surprises  us  with  flashes  of  humour  and  even  of 
eloquence.  In  his  hands,  in  spite  of  certain  mannerisms, 
language  is  made  a  remarkably  effective  instrument  of  philo- 

^  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  sect.  187.  ^  Ibid.,  sect.  189. 


350         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

sophical  expression.  His  attitude  to  Hegel  is  certainly  not 
less  independent  than  that  of  Green.  In  the  Preface  to 
The  Principles  of  Logic  (1883)  he  says :  '  For  Hegel  himself, 
assuredly  I  think  him  a  great  philosopher,  but  I  never  could 
have  called  myself  an  Hegelian,  partly  because  I  cannot  say 
that  I  have  mastered  his  system,  and  partly  because  I  could 
not  accept  what  seems  his  main  principle,  or  at  least  part 
of  that  principle.'  In  his  earliest  w^ork.  Ethical  Studies 
(1876),  a  book  which,  he  tells  us  in  Appearance  and 
Realityy  *in  the  main  still  expresses  my  opinions,*  his 
allegiance  to  the  Hegelian  philosophy  is  much  more 
marked.  But  at  the  close  of  the  Logic  he  thus  explicitly 
proclaims  his  abandonment  of  the  view,  common  to  Hegel 
and  Green,  that  '  the  real  is  the  rational,'  that  thought 
and  reality  are  identical.  'Unless  thought  stands  for 
something  that  falls  beyond  mere  intelligence,  if  "  think- 
ing "  is  not  used  with  some  strange  implication  that  never 
was  part  of  the  meaning  of  the  word,  a  lingering  scruple 
still  forbids  us  to  believe  that  reality  can  ever  be  purely 
rational.  It  may  come  from  a  failure  in  my  metaphysics, 
or  from  a  weakness  of  the  flesh  which  continues  to  blind 
me,  but  the  notion  that  existence  could  be  the  same  as 
understanding  strikes  as  cold  and  ghost-like  as  the  dreariest 
materialism.  That  the  glory  of  this  world  in  the  end  is 
appearance  leaves  the  world  more  glorious,  if  we  feel  it 
is  a  show  of  some  fuller  splendour  ;  but  the  sensuous 
curtain  is  a  deception  and  a  cheat,  if  it  hides  some  colour- 
less movement  of  atoms,  some  spectral  woof  of  impalpable 
abstractions,  or  unearthly  ballet  of  bloodless  categories. 
Though  dragged  to  such  conclusions,  we  cannot  embrace 
them.  Our  principles  may  be  true,  but  they  are  not 
reality.  They  no  more  make  that  Whole  which  com- 
mands our  devotion,  than  some  shredded  dissection  of 
human  tatters  is  that  warm  and  breathing  beauty  of  flesh 
which  our  hearts  found  delightful.'  ^ 

Mr.  Bradley  calls  his  chief  work  *  a  sceptical  study  of  first 
principles,'  ^   and    its   result   is   to  establish  the    ultimate 

^  Principles  of  Logic t  p.  533. 

•  Appearance  and  Reality,  Pref.,  p.  xii. 


F.    H.    BRADLEY  351 

inadequacy  of  all  our  so-called  knowledge.  The  contra- 
dictions of  thought,  he  argues,  prove  our  ignorance  of 
reality.  Since  our  ideas  contradict  existence,  as  well  as 
one  another,  the  world  of  thought  is  shown  to  be  a  world 
of  mere  appearance.  In  its  very  nature,  thought  is  vitiated 
by  a  fatal  flaw  :  it  is  discursive  or  relational,  and  relations 
never  express  reality  or  existence.  The  very  act  of 
judgment  is  fallacious.  To  judge  is  to  predicate  one  idea 
or  concept  of  another,  or  rather  of  reality  as  already  so 
far  conceived  in  the  subject-concept ;  but  the  two  con- 
cepts are  for  ever  different  from  one  another.  We 
never  succeed  in  solving  *■  the  old  puzzle,  how  to  justify 
the  attributing  to  a  subject  something  other  than  itself, 
and  which  the  subject  is  not.'  ^  *  The  problem  of 
reconciling  intelligibly  the  diversity  with  the  unity  .  .  . 
so  far  has  shown  itself  intractable.'  ^  This  holds  of  the 
self,  as  well  as  of  the  not-self;  'in  whatever  way  the  self 
is  taken,  it  will  prove  to  be  appearance.'  ^  It  follows  that 
we  are  limited  to  the  apprehension  of  mere  appearances. 
Only  the  self-consistent  is  real,  and  our  reality  is  never 
self-consistent.  '  Our  failure  so  far  lies  in  this,  that  we 
have  not  found  the  way  in  which  appearances  can  belong 
to  reality.'^ 

On  the  other  hand,  we  must  admit  the  reality  of  the 
appearances,  although  not  as  they  appear.  Since  they 
belong  to,  or  are  '  owned  '  by  reality,  the  appearances  must 
be  harmonious  or  self-consistent ;  and  to  be  harmonious, 
they  must  submit  to  the  modification  which  renders  them 
capable  of  such  existence.  *  We  may  say  that  everything, 
which  appears,  is  somehow  real  in  such  a  way  as  to  be  self- 
consistent.  The  character  of  the  real  is  to  possess  every- 
thing phenomenal  in  a  harmonious  form.  .  .  .  Appearance 
must  belong  to  reality,  and  it  must  therefore  be  concor- 
dant and  other  than  it  seems.  The  bewildering  mass  of 
phenomenal  diversity  must  hence  somehow  be  at  unity 
and  self-consistent ;  for  it  cannot  be  elsewhere  than  in 
reality,  and  reality  excludes  discord.'^     The  clue  to  the 

^  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  57.  '  Ibid.,  p.  58. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  119.  *  Ibid.,  p.  132.  *  Ibid.,  p.  140. 


352         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

nature  of  Reality  or  the  Absolute  is  found  in  the  unity  of 
that  immediate  experience,  sentience  or  'feeling,'  which 
conceptual  or  discursive  thought  breaks  up  into  distinct 
objects  and  subjects,  and  which  such  thought  is  itself 
unable  to  restore.  The  lower  or  infra-relational  unity  of 
feeling  suggests  dimly  to  us  the  nature  of  the  higher  or 
supra-relational  unity  in  which  the  differences  of  the  finite 
or  phenomenal  world  are  overcome  and  fused  in  a  single 
all-inclusive  and  harmonious  Whole.  The  same  term, '  ex- 
perience,' covers  both — the  unity  which  is  below  and  that 
which  is  above  thought.  The  Absolute  is  a  single,  all- 
inclusive,  and  perfectly  harmonious  experience.  That 
there  is  such  a  perfect  experience,  victorious  over  all  the 
difficulties  which  beset  the  human  understanding,  we 
must  assume  ;  but  its  nature  we  can  apprehend  only  in 
dim  outline  and  by  analogy  with  its  lower  prototype  of 
mere  animal  feeling.  Its  detailed  content — how  the  con- 
tradictions are  overcome — is  beyond  our  grasp.  All  that 
we  can  say  is  that  '  somehow ' — we  know  not  how — 
these  contradictions  are  overcome,  and  the  Whole  is 
experienced  as  such. 

While  no  finite  object,  or  object  of  thought,  survives 
unchanged,  or  as  such,  in  the  Absolute,  but  all  alike 
suffer  transmutation  when  resolved  into  the  ultimate 
Reality,  yet  this  change  may  partake  more  of  the  nature 
of  supplementation  or  more  of  that  of  negation  and 
suppression.  *  The  Absolute,  we  may  say  in  general,  has 
no  assets  beyond  appearances  ;  and  again,  with  appearances 
alone  to  its  credit,  the  Absolute  would  be  bankrupt.  All 
of  these  are  worthless  alike  apart  from  transmutation. 
But,  on  the  other  hand  once  more,  since  the  amount  of 
change  is  different  in  each  case,  appearances  differ  widely 
in  their  degrees  of  truth  and  reality.  There  are  predi- 
cates which,  in  comparison  with  others,  are  false  and 
unreal.'  ^  *  The  more  an  appearance,  in  being  corrected, 
is  transmuted  and  destroyed,  the  less  reality  can  such  an 
appearance   contain ;    or,    to    put    it   otherwise,    the  less 

*  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  489. 


F.    H.    BRADLEY  353 

2;enuinely  does  it  represent  the  Real.'^  The  criteria  of 
Reality  are  inclusiveness,  or  expansion,  and  harmony, 
or  self-consistency  :  *  the  amount  of  either  wideness  or 
consistency  gives  the  degree  of  reality  and  also  of  truth.' ^ 
These  are,  in  reality,  only  two  aspects  of  the  same  criterion. 
'  For  a  satisfaction  determined  from  the  outside  cannot 
internally  be  harmonious,  while,  on  the  other  hand,  if  it 
became  all-inclusive,  it  would  have  become  also  concor- 
dant.' ^     Since  the  Real  is  the  individual,  in  which  alone 

*  the  actual  identity  of  idea  and  existence '  is  attained,  it 
follows  that  '  throughout  our  world,  whatever  is  individual 
is  more  real  and  true  ;  for  it  contains  within  its  own 
limits  a  wider  region  of  the  Absolute,  and  it  possesses 
more  intensely  the  type  of  self-sufficiency.'  ^ 

The  application  of  this  standard  of  Reality  and  Truth 
legitimates  an  idealistic,  as  opposed  to  a  naturalistic  inter- 
pretation of  the  world.  Nature  is  absorbed  in  Spirit, 
though  Spirit  itself  is  absorbed  in  the  Absolute.  We  are 
even  warranted  in  saying  that  Nature,  as  apprehended  by 
the  ordinary  man,  still  more  as  seen  and  felt  by  the  poet 
and  painter,  is  more  real  than  Nature  as  scientifically 
interpreted.  *  The  Nature,  studied  by  the  observer  and  by 
the  poet  and  painter,  is  in  all  its  sensible  and  emotional 
fulness  a  very  real  Nature.  It  is  in  most  respects  more 
real  than  the  strict  object  of  physical  science.'  The 
latter  '  has  not  a  high  degree  of  reality  and  truth.  It  is 
a  mere  abstraction  made  and  required  for  a  certain 
purpose."*  *  Our  principle,  that  the  abstract  is  the  unreal, 
moves  us  steadily  upward.  It  forces  us  first  to  rejection 
of  bare  primary  qualities,  and  it  compels  us  in  the  end  to 
credit  Nature  with  our  higher  emotions.  That  process  can 
cease  only  where  Nature  is  quite  absorbed  into  spirit,  and 
at  every  stage  of  the  process  we  find  increase  in  reality.'  ® 

*  In  a  complete  philosophy  the  whole  world  of  appearance 
would  be  set  out  as  a  progress.  .  .  .  On  this  scale  pure 
Spirit  would  mark  the  extreme  most  removed  from  life- 
less Nature.     And,  at  each  rising  degree  of  this  scale,  we 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  376.  ^  Ihid.,  p.  375. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  412.  *.  Ibid.,  p.  382.  "  Ibid.,  p.  495- 

Z 


354         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

should  find  more  of  the  first  character  with  less  of  the 
second.  The  ideal  of  spirit,  we  may  say,  is  directly 
opposite  to  mechanism.  Spirit  is  a  unity  of  the  manifold 
in  which  the  externality  of  the  manifold  has  utterly 
ceased.  The  universal  here  is  immanent  in  the  parts,  and 
its  system  does  not  lie  somewhere  outside  and  in  the 
relations  between  them.  It  is  above  the  relational  form 
and  has  absorbed  it  in  a  higher  unity,  a  whole  in  which 
there  is  no  division  between  elements  and  laws.'  ^ 

Yet  even  in  Spirit  we  have  not  apprehended  the 
Absolute  ;  even  it  must  be  transmuted  and  absorbed  in 
that  higher  unity  and  totality.  *  Pure  spirit  is  not  realised 
except  in  the  Absolute.  It  can  never  appear  as  such  and 
with  its  full  character  in  the  scale  of  existence.  Per- 
fection and  individuality  belong  only  to  that  Whole  in 
which  all  degrees  alike  are  at  once  present  and  absorbed.'  2 
The  interpretation  of  Reality  as  Spirit  is  the  highest  truth 
we  can  reach  about  it ;  but  even  Truth  itself  is  not  real. 

*  Reality  is  concrete,  while  the  truest  truth  must  still  be 
more  or  less  abstract.' ^  'It  must  be  admitted  that,  in  the 
end,  no  possible  truth  is  quite  true.  It  is  a  partial  and 
inadequate  translation  of  that  which  it  professes  to  give 
bodily.  And  this  internal  discrepancy  belongs  irremov- 
ably  to  truth's  proper  character.'^  We  must  indeed 
insist  upon  the  difference  between  'absolute'  and  'finite' 
truth.      The     former    is    not     ^intellectually    corrigible.' 

*  There  is  no  intellectual  alteration  which  could  possibly, 
as  general  truth,  bring  it  nearer  to  ultimate  Reality.  .  .  . 
Absolute  truth  is  corrected  only  by  passing  outside  the 
intellect.  It  is  modified  only  by  taking  in  the  remaining 
aspects  of  experience.  But  in  this  passage  the  proper 
nature  of  truth  is,  of  course,  transformed  and  perishes.  .  .  . 
Truth  is  one  aspect  of  experience,  and  is  therefore  made 
imperfect  and  limited  by  what  it  fails  to  include '  ^  We 
can  know  the  universe  only  in  its  general  character,  not 
in  its  details.  '  It  is  not  known,  and  it  never,  as  a  whole, 
can  be  known,  in  such  a  sense  that  knowledge  would  be 

1  Appearance  and  Reality, y.  498.  *  Ibid.,  p,  4')9 

»  Ibid.,  p.  397.  *  ibid.,  p.  544.  6  Ibid.,  p.  545. 


F.   H.   BRADLEY  355 

the  same  as  experience  or  reality.  For  knowledge  and 
truth — if  we  suppose  them  to  possess  that  identity — would 
have  been,  therewith,  absorbed  and  transmuted.'  ^  *  Truth 
is  conditional,  but  it  cannot  be  intellectually  transcended. 
To  fill  in  its  conditions  would  be  to  pass  into  a  whole 
beyond  mere  intellect.' ^ 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  the  Absolute  is  an 
unknowable  Thing-in-itself.  Mr.  Bradley  tells  us  that 
his  aim  has  been  to  avoid  this  error  of  the  sheer  tran- 
scendence of  the  Absolute,  no  less  than  the  opposite  one, 
that  of  its  complete  and  indiscriminate  immanence  in  all 
appearances  alike.  '  It  costs  little  to  find  that  in  the  end 
Reality  is  inscrutable.  ...  It  is  a  simple  matter  to  con- 
clude further,  perhaps,  that  the  Real  sits  apart,  that  it  keeps 
state  by  itself  and  does  not  descend  into  phenomena.  Or 
it  is  as  cheap,  again,  to  take  up  another  side  of  the  same 
error.  The  Reality  is  viewed  perhaps  as  immanent  in 
all  its  appearances,  in  such  a  way  that  it  is,  alike  and 
equally,  present  in  all.  Everything  is  so  worthless  on  one 
hand,  so  divine  on  the  other,  that  nothing  can  be  viler 
or  can  be  more  sublime  than  anything  else.  It  is  against 
both  sides  of  this  mistake,  it  is  against  this  empty  tran- 
scendence and  this  shallow  Pantheism,  that  our  pages  may 
be  called  one  sustained  polemic'  ^  *  Reality  appears  in 
its  appearances,  and  they  are  its  revelation  ;  and  otherwise 
they  also  could  be  nothing  whatever.  The  Reality  comes 
into  knowledge,  and,  the  more  we  know  of  anything,  the 
more  in  one  way  is  Reality  present  with  us.  The  Reality 
is  our  criterion  of  worse  and  better,  of  ugliness  and  beauty, 
of  true  and  false,  and  of  real  and  unreal.  It  in  brief 
decides  between,  and  gives  a  general  meaning  to,  higher 
and  lower.  It  is  because  of  this  criterion  that  appearances 
differ  in  worth ;  and,  without  it,  lowest  and  highest 
would,  for  all  we  know,  count  the  same  in  the  universe. 
And  Reality  is  one  Experience,  self-pervading  and  superior 
to  mere  relations.  Its  character  is  the  opposite  of  that 
fabled  extreme  which  is  barely  mechanical,  and  it  is,  in 

^  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  545.  "'•  Ibid.,  p.  547. 

«  Ibid.,  p.  551. 


356         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

the  end,  the  sole  perfect  realisation  of  spirit.  We  may 
fairly  close  this  work  then  by  insisting  that  Reality  is 
spiritual.  There  is  a  great  saying  of  Hegel's,  a  saying  too 
well  known,  and  one  which  without  some  explanation 
I  should  not  like  to  endorse.  But  I  will  end  with  some- 
thing not  very  different,  something  perhaps  more  certainly 
the  essential  message  of  Hegel.  Outside  of  spirit  there  is 
not,  and  there  cannot  be,  any  reality,  and,  the  more  that 
anything  is  spiritual,  so  much  the  more  is  it  veritably 
real.'i 

How  far  Mr.  Bradley  has  travelled  from  the  positions 
of  earlier  English  idealists  must  be  clear  from  the  account 
of  his  philosophy  which  has  just  been  given.  But  we 
may  signalise,  in  conclusion,  three  important  points  in 
which  he  dissents  from  the  teaching  of  Green,  his  most 
important  predecessor.  The  first  is  the  ultimatencss  of 
personality.  While  Green  confidently  applied  the  con- 
ception of  self-consciousness  to  God,  Mr.  Bradley  regards 
this  conception,  like  all  others,  as  inapplicable  to  the 
Absolute.  The  self  being,  equally  with  the  not-self, 
mere  appearance,  and  the  conception  of  an  infinite  person 
being  self-contradictory,  it  follows  that  the  Absolute  is 
supra-personal.  Personality  is  indeed  a  higher  degree  of 
reality  than  that  of  impersonal  things.  '  It  is  better  to 
affirm  personality  than  to  call  the  Absolute  impersonal. 
But  neither  mistake  should  be  necessary.  The  Absolute 
stands  above,  and  not  below,  its  internal  distinctions.' ^ 
Secondly,  he  dissents  from  Green's  doctrine  of  the  ulti- 
mateness  of  morality  ;  this  too  is  for  him  only  appearance, 
not  reality.  *  The  radical  vice  of  all  goodness '  is  seen 
in  the  irreconcilable  dualism  of  the  ethical  ideals  of  self- 
realisation  and  self-sacrifice.  *  It  is  the  essential  nature  of 
my  self,  as  finite,  equally  to  assert  and,  at  the  same  time, 
to  pass  beyond  itself;  and  hence  the  objects  of  self-sacri- 
fice and  of  self-advancement  are  each  equally  mine.*^ 
This  inconsistency  of  goodness,  its  *  self-contradiction  in 
principle,'  proves  that  '  goodness  is  not  absolute  or  ulti- 

^  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  552.  2  Ibid.,  p.  533. 

'  lind.,  p.  417. 


F.   H.   BRADLEY  357 

mate  ;  it  is  but  one  side,  one  partial  aspect,  of  the  nature 
of  things.'  On  the  other  hand,  since  in  the  Absolute  no 
appearance  is  lost,  '  the  good  is  a  main  and  essential  factor 
in  the  universe.  By  accepting  its  transmutation  it  both 
realises  its  own  destiny  and  survives  in  the  result.'  While 
the  opposition  between  good  and  evil  is,  like  that  between 
truth  and  error,  in  the  end  unreal,  '  it  is,  for  all  that, 
emphatically  actual  and  valid.  Error  and  evil  are  facts, 
and  most  assuredly  there  are  degrees  of  each  ;  and  whether 
anything  is  better  or  worse,  does  without  any  doubt  make 
a  difference  to  the  Absolute.  And  certainly  the  better 
anything  is,  the  less  totally  in  the  end  is  its  being  over- 
ruled. But  nothing,  however  good,  can  in  the  end  be 
real  precisely  as  it  appears.  Evil  and  good,  in  short,  are 
not  ultimate ;  they  are  relative  factors  which  cannot 
retain  their  special  characters  in  the  Whole.' ^  Finally, 
the  denial  of  the  ultimateness  of  personality  and  morality 
leads  to  the  repudiation  of  Green's  doctrine  of  personal 
immortality  as  an  implication  of  the  moral  life.  Mr.  Bradley 
closes  his  discussion  of  the  arguments  for  such  a  view 
with  the  remark  that  they  all  '  rest  on  assumptions 
negatived  by  the  general  results  of  this  volume.  .  .  .  And 
to  debate  this  special  question,  apart  from  an  enquiry  into 
the  ultimate  nature  of  the  world,  is  surely  unprofitable.'  ^ 

1  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  430.  2  jud.,  p.  510. 


CONCLUSION 

PRESENT  TENDENCIES   IN    ENGLISH 
PHILOSOPHY 

It  is  the  task  of  the  future  historian  to  determine  the 
significance  of  the  present  tendencies  of  philosophical 
thought  in  England.  In  philosophy,  as  in  literature,  it 
is  impossible  to  estimate  the  importance  of  a  movement 
before  it  has  had  time  to  develop  its  implications.  What 
absorbs  the  attention  of  the  present  generation  may  sink 
into  insignificance  in  the  eyes  of  a  later  age.  Still,  it 
seems  fitting  to  conclude  this  study  of  English  philosophy 
virith  a  brief,  and  necessarily  tentative,  indication  of 
the  new^  developments  vs^hich  seem  to  be  taking  place  in 
the  present  day  in  that  philosophy,  and  to  suggest  their 
connexion  with  those  earlier  lines  of  thought  which  we 
have  endeavoured  to  trace. 

Two  new  features,  both  of  which  date  from  the  closing 
decades  of  the  nineteenth  century,  may  be  noted  before 
we  attempt  this  characterisation.  The  first  is  the  con- 
fluence of  the  two  streams  of  English  and  American 
philosophy.  There  has  occurred,  within  a  quite  recent 
period,  a  remarkable  development  of  philosophical  activity 
in  America,  ajid  philosophical  discussion  in  England  has 
received  a  distinct  impulse  from  that  development.  It 
seems  certain  that,  in  the  future,  the  movement  of  philo- 
sophical thought  in  England  and  America  will  be  a  single 
movement,  and  that  English  philosophy  will  gain,  in  depth 
as  well  as  in  volume,  by  the  combination.  The  second 
impulse  has  come  from  the  new  scientific  spirit  in  which 
the  problems  of  psychology  have  recently  been  investigated, 
the  works  which  mark  the  inauguration  of  the  new  epoch 

358 


CONCLUSION  359 

being  Professor  James  Ward's  article  *  Psychology  '  in  the 
ninth  edition  of  the  Encyclopedia  Britannica  (1886)  and 
William  James's  Principles  of  Psychology  (1890).  The 
'  new '  psychology  has  been  prosecuted  in  America  with 
an  ardour  greater  even  than  in  England  ;  and  in  both 
countries  the  conviction  has  grown  that,  while  it  is 
necessary  to  differentiate  psychology  with  a  new  sharp- 
ness from  metaphysics,  as  well  as  from  logic  and  ethics, 
full  account  must  be  taken  of  its  results  if  our  theories 
in  these  departments  of  philosophy  are  to  be  scientifically 
based.  English  philosophy  has  tended  in  the  past,  as 
we  have  seen,  to  adopt  the  psychological  method.  The 
more  adequate  understanding  of  the  psychological  problem 
seems  to  promise  much  new  light  on  the  limitations  of 
psychology,  as  well  as  the  correction  of  certain  errors 
in  philosophy  which  were  the  result  of  an  inadequate 
psychology. 

The  most  striking  feature  of  the  present  situation  is  the 
absence  of  any  really  constructive  or  reconstructive  meta- 
physical effort.  On  all  hands  we  find  signs  of  dissatisfaction 
with  the  results  of  such  efforts  in  the  past,  of  dissatisfaction 
with  idealism  in  particular.  While  the  idealism  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  has  still  such  distinguished  representatives 
as  Mr.  Bosanquet  in  England  and  Professor  Royce  in 
America  (to  mention  only  the  most  outstanding  names), 
there  is,  even  within  the  idealistic  school,  a  reaction 
against  the  intellectualistic  tendency  of  that  view.  The 
reaction  against  idealism  takes  various  forms — that  of  the 
reassertion  of  empiricism,  of  a  *  new  realism,'  and  of  prag- 
matism. The  common  feature  of  these  reactions,  over 
and  above  their  common  hostility  to  idealism,  is  an  effort 
to  approximate  philosophy  to  science.  They  all  alike 
are  mainly  concerned  with  questions  of  the  theory  of 
knowledge,  of  logic  or  methodology,  rather  than  with 
properly  metaphysical  questions  ;  and  in  all  of  them  alike 
we  may  see  the  effect,  somewhat  paralysing,  of  the  great 
scientific  movement  of  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  upon  the  philosophical  mind  of  the  English- 
speaking  race. 


36o         ENGLISH  PHILOSOPHERS 

It  is  doubtless,  in  part,  a  consequence  of  the  attention 
drawn  by  psychology  to  the  affective  and  volitional  aspects 
of  the  mental  life,  as  well  as  in  reaction  from  Green's 
view  of  reality  as  a  system  of  relations,  that  within, 
as  well  as  without  the  idealistic  school,  a  protest  has  been 
raised  against  *  intellectualism '  or  *  rationalism.'  The 
publication  of  Appearance  and  Reality  (1893)  marks  a 
turning-point  in  this  direction.  In  that  work  Mr.  Bradley 
seems  fatally  to  depreciate  our  knowledge,  in  the  strict 
sense,  of  the  Absolute,  insisting,  as  we  have  seen,  upon 
the  inevitable  inadequacy  of  Truth,  and  the  necessity 
of  supplementing  our  intellectual  apprehension  of  Reality 
by  other  modes  or  attitudes  which  enable  us  to  realise 
its  other  aspects.  It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  to  find 
that,  among  those  who  are  in  essential  agreement  with 
the  idealistic  point  of  view,  a  new  stress  has  recently 
been  laid  on  the  significance  of  the  life  of  will  or  moral 
personality,  a  tendency  which  is  in  keeping  with  the 
ethical  trend  of  English  philosophy  in  the  past  and  not 
unconnected  with  the  influence  of  the  Scottish  school.^ 

Perhaps  the  most  characteristic  statement  of  the 
empirical  reaction  against  idealism,  as  well  as  one  of 
the  most  characteristic  documents  of  contemporary  English 
philosophy,  is  found  in  Robert  Adamson's  Development  of 
Modern  Philosophy  (1903).  Adamson's  earlier  works  on 
the  philosophies  of  Kant  and  Fichte  and  his  article  on 
*  Logic '  in  the  Encylopadia  Britannica  (ninth  edition)  are 
written  from  the  standpoint  of  a  convinced  adherent  of 
idealism.  The  volumes  just  mentioned,  published  posthu- 
mously under  the  editorial  care  of  Professor  Sorley,  contain 
the  substance  of  his  lectures  as  professor  of  logic  and  meta- 
physics in  the  University  of  Glasgow,  and  indicate,  in  a 
clear  though  brief  and  tentative  way,  how  radically  his 
views  had  changed  in  the  later  years  of  his  philosophical 
activity.     The  keynote  is  struck  in  the  inaugural  address 

1  Cf.  A.  Seth  Pringle-Pattison,  Scottish  Philosophy  {\%%t^),  Hegelian- 
ism  and  Personality  (1887),  Man's  Place  in  the  Cosmos  (1897);  G.  H. 
Howison,  The  Limits  of  Evolution  (1901). 


CONCLUSION  361 

of  1895.^  'Philosophy,'  he  says,  'must  keep  close  to 
experience  and  draw  its  sustenance  therefrom.'  What  is 
now  needed  in  philosophy  is  a  reconciliation  between  the 
idealism  of  the  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  century  and 
the  new  scientific  knowledge  of  detail  which  was  the  attain- 
ment of  the  second  half  of  that  century.  Philosophy  must 
be  reconstructed  so  as  to  interpret  our  growing  experience 
of  nature  and  man.  The  fundamental  error  of  idealism 
is  seen  in  the  Kantian  view  that  knowledge  or  experience 
is  the  product  of  the  activity  of  the  knowing  subject, 
which  introduces  its  own  principles  of  unity  into  the 
alien  and  chaotic  material  of  sensation.  In  truth,  mind 
is  rather  the  product  of  experience  than  its  presupposition. 
Since  it  is  'the  space-character  in  certain  contents  of 
our  sense-experience '  that  first  leads  to  the  differentiation 
of  subject  and  object,  space  cannot  itself  be  a  subjective 
form  or  mental  condition  of  that  experience.  Similarly, 
it  is  the  constant  connexion,  the  ordered  process  of 
experience,  that  first  suggests  the  idea  of  cause,  not  the 
idea  of  causal  connexion  that  first  makes  such  experience 
possible.  In  general,  the  distinction  between  thought 
and  perception  or  experience  is  simply  the  distinction 
between  the  more  and  the  less  developed,  the  more 
and  the  less  general  or  abstract,  the  more  complex  and 
the  simpler  apprehension  of  reaHty.  Idealism  regards 
the  abstract  and  general  as  the  presupposition  of  that 
experience  of  which  it  is,  in  truth,  the  late  result.  If 
the  abstract  order  of  thought  is  to  have  real  significance, 
it  must  be  rooted  in  the  actual  character  of  reality  as 
apprehended  in  experience.  'In  the  long  run,  the  basis 
of  all  logical  necessity  is  the  necessity  of  fact.' 

A  more  constructive  statement,  on  experiential  lines,  is 
to  be  found  in  Mr.  Shadworth  Hodgson's  Metaphysic  of 
Experience  (1898),  in  which,  according  to  a  recent  writer, 
*  the  traditional  method  of  English  philosophy  is,  at  the 
present  day,  expounded  most  clearly,  and  accepted  most 

^  Development  0/ Modem  Philosophy,  iL  pp.  3-22. 


362  ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

unequivocally.'^  A  reflective  analysis  of  experience  dis- 
closes, Mr.  Hodgson  holds,  the  distinctness,  though  in- 
separableness,  of  consciousness  and  existence,  knowledge 
and  reality,  subject  and  object.  Reality,  as  the  content 
of  experience,  is  the  object  of  consciousness  or  knowledge  ; 
but  as  existent,  it  is  conditioned  by,  and  continuous  with 
the  entire  context  of  that  reality  which  includes  conscious- 
ness no  less  truly  than  consciousness  includes  it.  Con- 
sciousness, in  other  words,  does  not  account  for  itself ;  it 
is  part  of  a  greater  whole,  in  which  the  conditions  of  its 
existence  must  be  sought.  And  beyond  the  seen,  or 
finite  and  material  conditions,  lie  the  unseen  and  infinite 
conditions  which,  though  beyond  the  reach  of  speculative 
knowledge,  are  the  postulates  of  a  practical  faith  in  the 
reality  of  moral  distinctions. 

The  realistic  reaction,  which  seems  to  be  gaining  force 
both  in  England  and  in  America,  and  which  is  associated 
in  this  country  with  the  names  of  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell 
and  Mr.  George  E.  Moore,  is  difficult  to  describe,  in 
the  absence  of  any  systematic  statement  of  the  position. 
It  appears  to  be  a  subtler  version  of  Natural  Realism, 
a  doctrine  of  the  distinct  and  independent  existence  of 
the  object,  as  unaffected  by  our  knowledge  of  it.  In 
opposition  to  the  idealistic  view  of  relations  as  internal 
or  organic,  constituted  by  the  knowing  mind,  it  is  insisted 
that  relations  are  external,  and  do  not  affect  the  nature 
of  the  things  or  terms  related.  In  this  view  of  relation 
these  writers  seek  a  way  out  of  the  difficulties  which 
the  idealistic  interj^^etation  has  found  to  be  insuperable. 

Current  statements  of  the  view  are  mainly  logical  and 
methodological,  insisting  upon  the  necessity  of  a  new 
logic  as  the  presupposition  of  a  better  metaphysic.  As 
Mr.  Russell  says,  '  What  seems  to  me  so  far  firmly 
established  is  a  logic  and  a  method,  rather  than  any 
positive  metaphysical  results.'^ 

^  T.  M.  Forsyth,  English  Philosophy,  p.  185. 
^  Journal  of  Philosophy,  s\\\.  160. 


CONCLUSION  363 

Perhaps  the  most  novel,  as  it  is  certainly  the  most 
prominent,  form  of  the  reaction  against  idealism  is  that 
of  Pragmatism,  a  name  which  suggests  its  affinity  with 
the  practical  and  ethical  trend  which  we  have  seen  to 
be  one  of  the  most  characteristic  features  of  English 
philosophy  in  the  past.  But  the  new  movement  strikes 
a  note  unheard  till  now  in  the  national  philosophy. 
Those  who  had  hitherto  insisted  upon  the  supremacy 
of  the  ethical  interest  and  the  necessities  of  the  practical 
life  claimed  for  faith  the  right  and  the  ability  to  answer, 
in  its  own  practical  way,  the  questions  which  were  found 
to  be  unanswerable  in  terms  of  knowledge  ;  they  affirmed 
the  necessity  of  faith  as  a  substitute  for  reasoned  knowledge. 
The  new  contention  of  Pragmatism  is  that  knowledge 
itself  depends  on  practical  considerations,  that  the  intellect 
always  and  inevitably  works  in  subordination  to  the  will 
and  its  purposes,  that  all  knowledge  is  utilitarian,  and 
that  the  criterion  of  truth  is  not  conformity  to  reality, 
but  its  instrumental  value,  the  results  which  follow  from 
its  acceptance. 

The  movement  originated  in  America,  and  is  associ- 
ated in  that  country  with  the  names  of  William  James 
and  Professor  John  Dewey,  while  its  most  important 
English  advocate  is  Dr.  F.  C.  S.  Schiller.^  James,  to 
whose  gift  of  style  and  reputation  as  a  psychologist  the 
theory  owes  much  of  its  popularity,  dedicated  his  JVill  to 
Believe  (iSgy)  to  Mr.  C.  S.  Peirce,  to  whom,  in  Pragmatism 
(1907),  he  attributes  the  origin  of  the  name  and  the 
theory.  *  In  an  article  entitled  "  How  to  Make  Our 
Ideas  Clear,"  in  the  Popular  Science  Monthly  for  January 
1878,  Mr.  Peirce,  after  pointing  out  that  our  beliefs 
are  really  rules  for  action,  said  that,  to  develop  a 
thought's  meaning,  we  need  only  determine  what  con- 
duct it  is  fitted  to  produce  :  that  conduct  is  for  us  its 
sole  significance.  And  the  tangible  fact  at  the  root  of 
all  our  thought-distinctions,  however  subtle,  is  that  there 

^  Cf.  Dewey,  Studies  in  Logical  Theory  (1903)  ;  Schiller,  Humanism 
(1903),  sxiA  Studies  in  Humanism  (1907);  Henry  Sturt  (and  others), 
Personal  Idealism  (1902). 


364         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

is  no  one  of  them  so  fine  as  to  consist  in  anything  but 
a  possible  difference  of  practice.  To  attain  perfect  clear- 
ness in  our  thoughts  of  an  object,  then,  we  need  only 
consider  what  conceivable  effects  of  a  practical  kind 
the  object  may  involve — what  sensations  we  are  to 
expect  from  it,  and  what  reactions  we  must  prepare. 
Our  conception  of  these  effects,  whether  immediate  or 
remote,  is  then  for  us  the  whole  of  our  conception  of 
the  object,  so  far  as  that  conception  has  positive  signifi- 
cance at  all.  This  is  the  principle  of  Peirce,  the  principle 
of  pragmatism.  It  lay  entirely  unnoticed  by  any  one  for 
twenty  years,  until  I,  in  an  address  before  Professor  Howi- 
son's  philosophical  union  at  the  university  of  California, 
brought  it  forward  again  and  made  a  special  application  of 
it  to  religion.'  ^ 

James's  own  statement  of  the  method  of  pragmatism  is 
on  the  same  lines  as  that  of  Peirce,  making  the  criterion  of 
truth  purely  practical,  and  interpreting  knowledge  as  the  re- 
action of  the  intellect,  in  the  service  of  the  will,  to  the  needs 
of  the  practical  life  as  these  change  with  its  changing  circum- 
stances. *  The  pragmatic  method,'  he  tells  us,  *  is  to  try  to 
interpret  each  notion  by  tracing  its  respective  practical  con- 
sequences. What  difference  would  it  practically  make  to 
any  one  if  this  notion  rather  than  that  notion  were  true  ? 
If  no  practical  difference  whatever  can  be  traced,  then  the 
alternatives  mean  practically  the  same  thing,  and  all  dispute 
is  idle.'  ^  In  other  words,  the  theoretical  must  be  re- 
duced to  the  practical  difference.  The  pragmatic  attitude 
is  *  the  attitude  of  looking  away  from  first  things,  principles, 
"categories,"  supposed  necessities ;  and  of  looking  towards 
last  things,  fruits,  consequences,  facts.'  ^  In  an  essay 
on  *  Reflex  Action  and  Theism,' first  published  in  1881, 
James  offers  the  same  interpretation  of  the  function  of 
thought  in  the  life  of  man.  It  is  only  '  the  middle  segment 
of  the  mental  curve,  and  not  its  termination '  :  the  mediator 
between  sensation  and  action,  or,  better,  reaction.  '  As 
the  last  theoretic  pulse  dies  away,  it  does  not  leave  the 

^  Pragmaiism,  pp.  46,  47.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  45. 

"  Ibid.,  p.  54. 


CONCLUSION  365 

mental  process  complete  :  it  is  but  the  forerunner  of  the 
practical  moment,  in  which  alone  the  cycle  of  mentality 
finds  its  rhythmic  pause.  We  easily  delude  ourselves 
about  this  middle  stage.  Sometimes  we  think  it  final, 
and  sometimes  we  fail  to  see,  amid  the  monstrous  diversity 
in  the  length  and  complication  of  the  cogitations  which 
may  fill  it,  that  it  can  have  but  one  essential  function, 
and  that  the  one  we  have  pointed  out — the  function  of 
defining  the  direction  which  our  activity,  immediate  or 
remote,  shall  take.'  ^  *  From  its  first  dawn  to  its  highest 
actual  attainment,  we  find  that  the  cognitive  faculty, 
where  it  appears  to  exist  at  all,  appears  but  as  one  element 
in  an  organic  mental  whole,  and  as  a  minister  to  higher 
mental  powers — the  powers  of  will.  Such  a  thing  as  its 
emancipation  and  absolution  from  these  organic  relations 
receives  no  faintest  colour  of  plausibility  from  any  fact  we 
can  discern.'^  In  the  Principles  of  Psychology  (1890)  he 
had  already  pointed  out  that  the  whole  activity  of  con- 
ception is  determined  by  '  the  necessity  which  my  finite 
and  practical  nature  lays  upon  me.  My  thinking  is  first 
and  last  and  always  for  the  sake  of  my  doing.  .  .  .  Our 
scope  is  narrow,  and  we  must  attack  things  piecemeal, 
ignoring  the  solid  fullness  in  which  the  elements  of 
Nature  exist,  and  stringing  one  after  another  of  them 
together  in  a  serial  way,  to  suit  our  little  interests  as  they 
change  from  hour  to  hour.'  ^ 

The  statement  of  the  theory  favoured  by  Professor 
Dewey  and  Dr.  Schiller  is  rather  that  which  is  suggested 
by  the  actual  procedure  of  science  in  the  verification  of 
hypotheses  by  the  service  which  they  render  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  our  experience.  As  Professor  James  himself 
summarises  their  teaching  :  *  Everywhere,  these  teachers 
say,  "  truth "  in  our  ideas  and  beliefs  means  the  same 
thing  that  it  means  in  science.  It  means,  they  say, 
nothing  but  this,  that  ideas  (which  themselves  are  but 
parts  of  our  experience)  become  true  just  in  so  far  as 
they  help  us  to  get  into  satisfactory  relation  with  other 

^  The  IVill  to  Believe,  pp.  123-4.  '  ^bid.,  p.  140. 

'  Principles  of  Psychology,  ii.  334. 


366         ENGLISH   PHILOSOPHERS 

parts  of  our  experience,  to  summarise  them  and  get  about 
among  them  by  conceptual  short-cuts  instead  of  follow- 
ing the  interminable  succession  of  particular  phenomena. 
Any  idea  upon  which  we  can  ride,  so  to  speak  ;  any  idea 
that  will  carry  us  prosperously  from  any  one  part  of  our 
experience  to  any  other  part,  linking  things  satisfactorily, 
working  securely,  simplifying,  saving  labour ;  is  true  for 
just  so  much,  true  in  so  far  forth,  true  instrumentally.'  ^ 
In  the  Principles  of  Psychology^  however,  James  had  himself 
already  clearly  affirmed  the  teleological  or  instrumental 
significance  of  conceptual  thought,  and  had  identified  this 
interpretation  with  that  which  connects  theory  with 
practice.  *The  conception  with  which  we  handle  a  bit 
of  sensible  experience  is  really  nothing  but  a  teleological 
instrument.  This  whole  function  of  conceiving,  of  fixing, 
and  holding  fast  to  meanings,  has  no  significance  apart 
from  the  fact  that  the  conceiver  is  a  creature  with  partial 
purposes  and  private  ends.'  ^ 

There  are  two  main  grounds  on  which  the  Pragmatists 
rest  their  opposition  to  Absolute  Idealism.  The  first  is  that 
it  is  the  expression  of  an  abstractly  theoretical,  rationalistic, 
or  intellectualistic  attitude,  while  the  right  attitude  is  practi- 
cal or  voluntaristic.  This  has  been  made  sufficiently  clear 
by  the  account  now  given  of  the  pragmatic  view  of  truth. 
The  second  is  that  Absolute  Idealism  is  a  '  monistic ' 
view  of  reality,  which  fails  to  do  justice  to  the  detailed 
facts  of  our  experience,  and  especially  to  the  facts  of  the 
moral  life  and  the  individual  freedom  of  initiative  which 
these  facts  imply.  As  against  such  an  interpretation  of 
reality  as  a  *  block-universe,'  the  Pragmatists  maintain  the 
necessity  of  adopting  a  *  pluralistic  '  view.^  Such  a  plural- 
istic reaction  against  idealistic  Monism  is  not,  of  course, 
peculiar  to  the  pragmatists  ;  but  what  distinguishes  the 
pragmatic  assertion  of  this  view  is  the  ethical  interest  which 
is  its  primary  source,  as  we  see  from  such  a  characteristic 
utterance  as  the  following  from  James's  essay  on  *The 
Dilemma  of  Determinism,'  first  published  in  1884.    *The 

*  Pragmatism,  p.  58.  *  Principles  of  Psychology,  i.  482. 

3  Cf.  James,  A  Pluralistic  Universe  (1909). 


CONCLUSION  367 

indeterminism  I  defend,  the  free-will  theory  of  popular 
sense  based  on  the  judgment  of  regret  .  .  .  gives  us  a 
pluralistic,  restless  universe,  in  which  no  single  point  of 
view  can  ever  take  in  the  whole  scene  ;  and  to  a  mind 
possessed  of  the  love  of  unity  at  any  cost,  it  will,  no  doubt, 
remain  forever  inacceptable.  .  .  .  But  while  I  freely 
admit  that  the  pluralism  and  the  restlessness  are  repug- 
nant and  irrational  in  a  certain  way,  I  find  that  every 
alternative  to  them  is  irrational  in  a  deeper  way.  The 
indeterminism  .  .  .  offends  only  the  native  absolutism  of 
my  intellect, — an  absolutism  which,  after  all,  perhaps, 
deserves  to  be  snubbed  and  kept  in  check.  But  the 
determinism  .  .  .  violates  my  sense  of  moral  reality 
through  and  through.'  ^ 

1   The  Will  to  Believe,  y^^.  176-7. 


INDEX 


Abbott,  E.  A.,  quoted,  46 
Adamson,  R.,  360,  quoted,  12 
Agnosticism,  7,  305 
Albee,  E.,  quoted,  294 
American  and  English  philosophy, 

358 
Arnold,  Matthew,  quoted,  207 
Associationism,  208 

Bacon,  Francis,  character,  20 ; 
statesmanship,  23 ;  as  judge, 
25 ;  relation  to  the  Renais- 
sance, 27  ;  attitude  to  Aristotle, 
29;  induction,  31  ;  methods  of 
induction,  40 ;  interpretation 
versus  anticipation  of  nature, 
35  ;  idols,  35  ;  forms,  37  ;  in- 
fluence on  English  philosophy, 
48  ;  knowledge  of  God,  49  ; 
ethical  views,  51,  55  ;  style, 
52 ;  Essays f  53  ;  New  Atlantis, 

55 

Bacon,  Roger,  1 1 

Bain,  Alexander,  Mill  on,  278 ; 
Spencer  on,  278;  physiological 
and  genetic  method,  279  ;  laws 
of  association,  279  ;  contribu- 
tions to  psychology,  280 ;  be- 
lief, 280;  external  world,  281 ; 
ethical  theory,  282 

Beattie,  James,  236 

Bentham,  Jeremy,  as  social  reformer, 
241  ;  principle  of  utility,  241  ; 
end  and  motive,  242  ;  sanc- 
tions, 242  ;  hedonistic  calculus, 
242 

Berkeley,  George,  style,  123  ;  theo- 
logical interest,  125  ;  imma- 
terialism,  125 ;  constructive 
philosophy,     126;     his     new 


idealism,  126;  and  Locke, 
128;  abstract  ideas,  130; 
matter,  132  ;  materialism,  133; 
causation,  134 ;  theory  of  vision, 
134;  notions,  137;  spiritual 
substance,  137  ;  spiritual  cause, 
139;  Alciphron,  141  ;  virtue, 
142 ;  passive  obedience,  143  ; 
Siris,  143 

Bosanquet,  Bernard,  359 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  style,  349;  attitude 
to  Hegel,  351  ;  thought  and 
reality,  350 ;  appearance  and 
reality,  350;  experience,  352; 
the  Absolute,  352, 354  ;  degrees 
of  truth  and  reality,  352 ; 
criterion  of  reality,  353;  the 
individual,  353  ;  nature  and 
spirit,  353 ;  truth  and  reality, 
354;  transcendence  and  im- 
manence, 355;  spirit  and 
reality,  356;  differences  from 
Green,  356 ;  personality  of  God, 
356;  goodness,  356;  immor- 
tality, 357  ;  referred  to,  360 

Bridges,  J.  H.,  quoted,  13 

Brown,  Thomas,  313 

Butler,  Joseph,  style,  189;  bene- 
volence, 198, 200 ;  intuitionism, 
198;  self-love,  199,  200,  203; 
conscience,  201 ;  obligation, 
201  ;  desire,  203 ;  virtue  and 
happiness,  203  ;  probability, 
204;  experience,  205;  know- 
ledge and  practice,  206 ; 
Analogy,  207 


368 


Cairo,  Edward,  343 
Caird,  John,  345 
Calderwood,  Henry,  308 


INDEX 


369 


Cambridge  Platonists,  toleration, 
80 ;  influence  of  Descartes,  80 ; 
relation  to  Plato,  82  ;  style,  83  ; 
faith  and  reason,  83  ;  spiritual 
philosophy,  8  5  ;  ethical  views, 

87 
Charles,  E.,  quoted,  13 
Church,  R.  W.,  quoted,  21,  25,  52, 

54 
Coleridge,  S.  T.,  quoted,  82,  83; 
and     transcendentalism,     319, 
322  ;  and  Bentham,  320  ;  and 
Plotinus,    321  ;    and    Hartley, 

321  ;    imagination  and   fancy, 

322  ;  reason  and  understand- 
ing, 323  ;  and  Kant,  323,  325  ; 
practical  reason,  324 ;  and 
Jacobi,  325  ;  faith,  325  ;  spirit 
and  nature,  325  ;  morality  and 
prudence,  326 ;  style,  327  ; 
Newman  on,  327 

Collins,  W.  Lucas,  quoted,  189 
Continental,  contrasted  with   Eng- 
lish, philosophy,  3 
Corpuscularian  hypothesis,  133 
Cudworth,  Ralph,  85,  86 
Culverwel,  Nathanael,  89 
Cumberland,  Richard,  90 

Descartes  and  Bacon,  3,  5 ;  and 
Cambridge  Platonists,  80 

Dewey,  John,  363,  365 ;  quoted, 
284, 285 

Dicey,  A.  V.,  quoted,  258,  261 

Ellis,  R.  L.,  quoted,  45 

Faith,  and  reason,  83 

Ferguson,  Adam,  236 

Ferrier,  J.  F.,  on  philosophical 
method,  332 ;  on  Common 
Sense,  332 ;  on  psychology, 
333-336;  and  Hegel,  333; 
and  Berkeley,  334  ;  style,  334 ; 
and  Reid  336 ;  and  Hamilton, 
336;  subject  and  object,  337; 
theory  of  ignorance,  337 ; 
ontology,  338;  ethical  theory, 

339 
Fischer,  Kuno,  quoted,  20,  42,  44 
Fowler,  T.,  quoted,  37,  39,  40,  47, 

190 


Eraser,  A.  Campbell,  and  Martineau, 
309 ;  and  English  philosophy, 
312;  and  Thomas  Brown,  313; 
and  Berkeley,  314;  and  Hume, 
314;  and  Hamilton,  314;  on 
agnosticism,  315;  on  mystery, 
315  ;  on  faith,  317  ;  on  perfect 
goodness,  317;  on  moral  evil, 
318 ;  on  freedom,  318  ;  quoted, 
92,  96,  126,  130,  141,  144, 
156, 183 

Gardiner,  S.  R.,  quoted,  23,  25 

Gay,  John,  208,  217 

German  philosophy,  its  influence 
on  English,  237 

Gnosticism,  7 

Gosse,  E.,  quoted,  119,  123 

Green,  T.  H.,  and  Hegel,  344 ; 
theory  of  knowledge,  346; 
knowledge  of  God,  347  ;  ethics, 
347 ;  view  of  God,  348 ;  im- 
mortality, 349 

Grimm,  E.,  referred  to,  156 

Grote,  John,  positivism  and  idealism, 
340;  knowledge  of  acquaint- 
ance and  knowledge  of  judg- 
ment, 341 

Hallam,  H.,  quoted,  77 

Hamilton,  Sir  William,  reputation, 
298 ;  style,  299 ;  and  Reid, 
300 ;  and  Common  Sense,  300  ; 
natural  realism,  300 ;  Philo- 
sophy of  the  Conditioned,  301 

Hartley,  David,  style,  209;  influence 
of  Locke  and  Newton  on,  209  ; 
necessity,  210 ;  association, 
210;  moral  sense,  2ii  ;  love 
of  God,  211 

Haureau,  B.,  quoted,  14,  16 

Herbert  of  Cherbury,  89,  94,  n. 

Hobbes,  Thomas,  and  Bacon,  56 ; 
on  practical  value  of  knowledge, 
56  ;  on  ignorance  of  God,  57  ; 
on  scientific  method,  58 ;  on 
definition,  59 ;  on  sensation, 
61  ;  on  motion,  62 ;  natural 
and  civil  philosophy,  63 ;  works, 
63  ;  method,  64  ;  psychology, 
64 ;  good  and  evil,  65 ;  will, 
65 ;  state  of  nature,  66 ;  laws 
of  nature,  69  ;  social  contract, 
2  A 


37° 


INDEX 


69 ;  comraonwealth  defined, 
70 ;  sovereignty,  72 ;  the  State, 
73  ;  Church  and  State,  73 ; 
defects  of  political  theory,  74  ; 
style,  76 

Hodgson,  Shadworth,  361 

Hoflfding,  H.,  quoted,  240,  263 

Hooker,  Richard,  117 

Howison,  G.  H.,  360  n. 

Hume,  David,  works,  149 ;  style, 
149;  logic  of  empiricism,  150  ; 
nominalism,  151 ;  psychological 
method,  151  ;  knowledge  and 
experience,  152  ;  problem  of 
cause,  153  ;  relation  of  Treatise 
and  Enquiries,  155  ;  impres- 
sions and  ideas,  157  ;  impres- 
sions of  sensation  and  reflexion, 
158;  ideas  of  memory  and 
imagination,  1 59  ;  association 
of  ideas,  1 59 ;  philosophical 
relations  of  ideas,  159,  162 ; 
relations  of  ideas  and  matters 
of  fact,  160;  the  causal  in- 
ference, 160 ;  material  sub- 
stance, 164 ;  spiritual  sub- 
stance, 166 ;  personal  identity, 
167  ;  scepticism,  168  ;  mathe- 
matics, 172  ;  ideas  of  space 
and  time,  173  ;  the  passions, 
174 ;  necessity  and  liberty,  175 ; 
ethical  theory,  175 ;  the  passions 
and  self-love,  178  ;  benevolence 
and  virtue,  179;  obligation, 
180 ;  philosophy  of  religion, 
180  ;  Natural  History  of  Re- 
ligion, 181  ;  Theism,  181,  184; 
Miracles,  182;  providence, 
1 82 ;  Dialogues  on  Natural 
Religion,  1 83  ;  argument  from 
design,  185;  goodness  or  bene- 
volence of  God,  186 

Hutcheson,  Francis,  style,  189 ; 
moral  sense,  195  ;  benevolence, 
196 ;  self-love,  196 

Hutton,  R.  H.,  quoted,  312 

Huxley,  T.  H.,  agnosticism,  307  ; 
quoted,  183 

jACOBi,  325 

James,  William,  psychology,  359 ; 
pragmatism,  363 


Kant,    compared    with     English 
philosophers,  8 

Lamb,  Charles,  quoted,  190 
Latitudinarians,  80 
Laurie,  H.,  quoted,  216 
Lindsay,  T.  M.,  quoted,  1 4 
Locke,  John,  and  Bacon,  92,   93 
and  Hobbes,  92;  and  Descartes 
93  ;   epistemology,  94  ;   know 
ledge  and  practice,  95  ;  innate 
ideas,  95  ;  '  idea '  defined,  96 
plan  of  Essay,  96  ;   limits  of 
inquiry,   97 ;   experience,   98 
ideas    of    sensation    and    re- 
flexion,     100 ;     primary    and 
secondary  qualities,  100  ;  ma- 
terial  substance,    10 1  ;    parti- 
cular substance,  102  ;  nominal 
and  real  essence,  103  ;  spiritual 
substance,  103 ;  idea  of  cause 
or  power,  104 ;  idea  of  infinity, 
104 ;    knowledge,    its    nature 
and  degrees,  105,  129,  133, 135; 
knowledge  of  our  own  existence, 
105  ;  knowledge  of  the  exist- 
ence of  God,  106  ;  knowledge 
of   the   existence   of   external 
things,    106;    no    'science    of 
bodies,'    109 ;    no    science    of 
spirits.  III ;  general  knowledge, 
III ;  mathematical  knowledge, 
lli;   ethics,    112,    116;    pro- 
bability, 112  ;  'judgment,'  113; 
faith    and   reason,    1 14 ;    '  en- 
thusiasm,' 1 14 ;  political  obliga- 
tion, 116  ;  social  contract,  I17; 
toleration,    118;    Church   and 
State,    118;   style,    119;   and 
agnosticism,  307 

M'COSH,  J.,  236 
MacCunn,  J.,  quoted,  249 
Mackintosh,    Sir    James,    quoted, 

189,  190,  209,  222,  223 
Mandeville,  Bernhard  de,  188 
Mansel,  H.  L.,  and  Hamilton,  303  ; 

on  morality,  304  ;  on  the  self, 

305 
Martineau,  James,  and  Fraser,  309  ; 
and  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  310 ; 
and  Priestley,  311;  freedom. 


INDEX 


371 


311  ;     ethical     theory,     312; 
style,  312  ;  quoted,  249 

Masson,  David,  quoted,  77 

Mill,  James,  association,  243 ; 
nominalism,  244  ;  belief,  244  ; 
the  self,  245  ;  J.  S.  Mill  on, 
246 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  on  belief,  244; 
the  self,  245,  273  ;  his  recon- 
ciling project,  247  ;  on  Bentham 
and  Coleridge,  248,  320;   his 
inconsistencies,     248 ;     crisis, 
251  ;  essay  on  Bentham,  252 
doctrine  of  quality  in  pleasures 
255 ;     conscience,    255 ;     self- 
sacrifice,    256 ;     principle    of 
utility,      257 ;     desire,     257 
liberty,  258  ;  intuitionism  and 
empiricism,   261,   271  ;    tran 
scendentalism,      262 ;     Logic. 
263 ;  scientific   method,   263 
account     of    causation,     265 
the  syllogism,  267  ;  mathemati 
cal  knowledge,  269  ;  ethology, 
270;  Examination  of  Hamilton 
271  ;  theory  of  external  world 
273  ;  Essays  on  Religion,  274 
nature,  274  ;  utility  of  religion 
275;  religion  of  Humanity,  275 
supernaturalism,  275  ;   poetry 
276  ;  theism,  276  ;  First  Cause 
276 ;    argument  from   design 
276  ;   omnipotence  and  good 
ness,   275,    277 ;    immortality 
277 ;    miracles,    277  ;     imagi 
nation,  277  ;  Christianity,  278 

Moore,  G.  E.,  362 

Morley,  Lord,  quoted,  48,  248 

Newman,  J.  H.,  on  Coleridge,  327 ; 
style,  328 ;  assent,  328 ;  notional 
and  real,  328  ;  certitude,  329  ; 
logic  and  reality,  329 ;  nature 
of  proof,  330;  the  Illative 
Sense,  330 

Nichol,  John,  quoted,  22,  37,  48, 

49 
Nominalism,  6,  15 

OcKHAM,  William  of,  11,  14 
Oswald,  James,  236 


Palev,  Thomas,  and  Gay,  217  ; 
and  Tucker,  217;  style,  222; 
argument  from  design,  223 ; 
virtue  and  obligation,  224 ; 
happiness,  255;  'general  rules,' 
225  ;  probation,  226 

Pattison,  A.  Seth  Pringle-,  360  n. 

Pattison,  Mark,  quoted,  203 

Peirce,  C.  S.,  363 

Personal  idealism,  360 

Pluralism,  366 

Pragmatism,  363 

Price,  Richard,  and  Butler,  227  ; 
and  Hume,  227 ;  and  Locke, 
227  ;  understanding  and  imagi- 
nation, 227 ;  understanding 
and  reasoning,  228 ;  Common 
Sense,  228  ;  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong,  228  ;  obligation,  228  ; 
reason  and  action,  229 ;  and 
Kant,  229 ;  self-interest,  229 

Psychological  method  of  English 
philosophy,    4 ;     Ferrier    on, 

333,  336 
Psychology,  the  '  new,'  358 

Realism,  Scholastic,  15;  'new,' 
362 

Reid,  Thomas,  '  philosophy  of 
Common  Sense,'  230,  232 ; 
the  '  ideal  theory,'  230 ;  and 
Hume,  230 ;  '  simple  appre- 
hension,' 231  ;  judgment,  232  ; 
'judgments  of  nature'  or 
'natural  suggestions,'  232; 
and  Priestley,  233  ;  Kant  on, 
233 ;  compared  with  Kant, 
235 ;  defects,  236 

R^musat,  Charles  de,  quoted,  12 

Robertson,  G.  Croom,  quoted,  2, 
II,  71 

Rousseau,  75 

Royce,  Josiah,  359 

Russell,  Bertrand,  362 

Schiller,  F.  C.  S.,  363,  365 

Scholasticism,  3,  5,  10,  14 

Science,  its  influence  on  English 
philosophy,  238,  359 

Scottish  philosophy,  Reid  the 
founder  of,  227,  230';  in 
France,  236 ;  in  America,  236 


372 


INDEX 


Selby-Bigge,  L.  A.,  quoted,  142, 
156 

Shaftesbury,  Earl  of,  style,  189 ; 
constitution  of  human  nature, 
190 ;  moral  sense,  191  ;  dis- 
interestedness of  virtue,  193  ; 
obligation,  193 ;  the  good  and 
pleasure,  194 

Shawcross,  J. ,  quoted,  322,  323 

Sidgwick,  Henry,  ethical  theory, 
297  ;  quoted,  215 

Smith,  Adam,  sympathy,  212 ; 
psychological  interest  of  his 
theory,  213;  social  nature  of 
morality,  214;  self-interest, 
215  ;  style,  216 

Smith,  John,  84 

Sorley,  W.  R.,  quoted,  10,  78 ; 
referred  to,  94  «.,  360 

Spedding,  James,  quoted,  54 

Spencer,  Herbert,  systematic 
character  of  his  philosophy, 
284  ;  his  independence,  285  ; 
the  *  synthetic  philosophy,' 
286  ;  ultimate  scientific  ideas, 
286 ;  force,  287 ;  persistence 
of  force,  287 ;  uniformity 
of  law,  288 ;  equivalence  of 
forces,  288  ;  law  of  evolution, 
289;  dissolution,  291  ;  ethical 
interest,  291  ;  Social  Statics, 
292  ;  moral  sense,  292  ; 
empirical  and  rational  utili- 
tarianism,  292  ;  absolute  and 


relative  ethics,  293 ;  justice, 
294 ;  prudence  and  beneficence, 
294 ;  evolution  and  ethics, 
294 ;  sense  of  duty,  294'; 
intuitionism  and  empiricism, 
294 ;  the  individual  and  the 
State,  295 ;  style,  296  ;  ag- 
nosticism, 305 

Spinoza,  9 

Stephen,  Leslie,  quoted,  189,  190, 
207,  209,  210,  215,  220,  221, 
222,  223,  246,  258,  319 

Stewart,  Dugald,  236 

Stirling,  J.  Hutchison,  341 

Taine,  H.,  quoted,  264 

Taylor,  A.  E.,  quoted,  60,  73 

Toleration,  80,  118 

Tucker,  Abraham,  and  Gay,  217; 
and  Locke,  218;  'translation,' 
218  ;  ultimate  good,  218  ;  self- 
interest  as  motive,  218  ;  virtue 
and  self-interest,  219 ;  style, 
221 

Tulloch,  John,  quoted,  81,  82,  83 

Utilitarians,  The,  240 

Wallace,  William,  343 
Ward,  James,  359 
Westcott,  B.  F.,  quoted,  83 
Whichcote,  Benjamin,  80,  84,  88 
Windelband,      referred     to,     30 ; 
quoted,  150 


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